


Regression Towards the Mean

by Fangirllikewhoa, oddgirlout



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Clone!Delphine, Clones, F/F, Monitor!Cosima
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 00:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4645857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirllikewhoa/pseuds/Fangirllikewhoa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddgirlout/pseuds/oddgirlout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Self-aware since the age of fourteen, Cosima Niehaus has largely come to terms with her existence as a clone and as one of the many individuals created under the umbrella of Project Leda.  Over the years she has grown used to the monitoring, the constant invasions of privacy, and the strangely paternal presence of Dr. Aldous Leekie of The DYAD Institute.  But her world is about to change as she is given the chance to see the other side, a chance to be the monitor instead of the monitored, and perhaps a chance for something more.</p><p>A flip the script, semi-canon compliant (if you tilt your head and squint) take on the events of season one but with clone Delphine.  Because the only thing better than one Delphine, is ALL OF THE DELPHINES.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Variation Under Domestication

COSIMA

I know I should be concentrating on the words coming out of Dr. Leekie’s mouth but I can’t stop staring at the vein on his temple that keeps jumping as he speaks. It is totally hypnotic. The first time I noticed it was right after he finally made the wise decision to shave his head. I was fourteen. A full decade of pretending to listen closely to his lectures by counting the number of times I saw that pulse jump. A decade to come to terms with the facts of my existence. I am a clone. A miracle of genetics. The result of decades of research done in secret by scientists whose belief in the potential for positive outcomes outweighed the obvious moral issues associated with such an experiment.

They broke it to me gently, slowly. First, my mom brought me in to Dr. Leekie’s office and we talked in generalities about cloning. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept, given that my parents are research scientists at UC San Diego and I’d spent the better part of my young life hanging out in their labs, waiting for slides to culture, for sequences to run. I liked playing with the rats, though once my dad got mad at me for naming them, for playing with them, claiming that I had potentially damaged his experiment. My “punishment” was playing with the control group, as well. That’s my dad, total egghead and total softie.

Soon, we were returning to Leekie’s lab every week. At first I thought maybe he was just a friend of my parents, and maybe a little creepy because the way he looked at me, the way he listened when I talked, was different than other adults. He actually listened, for one. And he didn’t seem to think I was a weirdo. He told me I was clever, cheeky. And then, one day after he’d shown me his embryology lab he sat me down in his office. My parents came in and sat next to me on the couch, which I thought was totally bizarre. And they told me.

Dr. Leekie’s voice took on that quality it always did when he was lecturing— it became strong, melodious, and intense. “Cosima, you are different. Special. In one way you are unique in all the world, but in another you are exactly the same as just a few others. I want to tell you about how you came to be, what you are. _Who_ you are remains to be seen, but _what_ you are, I think, will be an important part of that. I know you are only fourteen” I interrupted him, reminding him that I was fourteen and a quarter. The months had seemed important then. He nodded, solemnly, “fourteen and a quarter. But in these last few weeks I have seen what your parents say is true. That you are a mature girl. Bright. Full of curiosity. You ask wonderful questions- like a true scientist. I can see why they are so very proud of you.” My dad had squeezed my arm at that, and I began to feel nervous.

Dr. Leekie continued, “Cosima, what would you say if I told you that from the moment you were born... No, that’s not even right. From the moment you were formed, at the most basic level, you have been part of an experiment? That your very existence before me was proof of a hypothesis? That you are special.” He stopped pacing and squatted in front of the leather couch I was sitting in so that he could meet my eyes. “You, Cosima Niehaus are the result of decades of study, of grueling work, of the aspirations of many brilliant minds. You, my dear, are a clone. Do you know what that means?”

Had he said clone? There was a deep rushing sound in my ears and I tried to focus on him. He had asked me a question. “Yes. A clone is an exact genetic replica. A genetic identical. Sort of like identical twins, but different.”

His eyes lit up. “Yes! You brilliant girl. That’s exactly it. You are one of just a few genetic identicals. When you were just a tiny clump of cells, we transferred you to your mother’s uterus where you grew until you were ready to be born. Your identicals were similarly transferred, but their parents don’t know how special those girls are. You are the only one in our grand experiment who is to be made aware of the truth of your creation. You mustn’t ever tell anyone other than your parents and me. Do you have any questions?”

I looked at Dr. Leekie, my face the very picture of fourteen-year-old incredulity. It was then that I noticed for the first time, the vein that jumped in his temple. “Um, yeah. I have a few questions.”

He laughed at that, and then he and my parents spent the better part of the evening answering all of the questions I could come up with. How many of us were there? He wasn’t at liberty to say. A few. Was the outcome of the experiment only to see if they could clone someone? No. It was ongoing. They’d left that one lying there, a meaningful look passing between my parents and the good doctor. Who was the original? He claimed not to know- that it was secret at a level he didn’t have access to. Was I still human? That was the question that broke my mother. She pulled me into her arms and smoothed my hair behind my ear with her hand. “Of course you’re human, sweetheart. You’re my little girl!” She cried. My mother never cries. She cried and stroked my hair and told me that I was just the same as I had been the day before, and not to worry. But she was wrong. Now I knew that I was different. I wouldn’t ever be quite the same again.

That’s how I became the first (we think) self-aware human clone. I continued to meet with Dr. Leekie every week for medical tests, to learn about genetics, cloning, a social movement he began called Neolution, and about us—Project Leda. I was never pushed, but as I continued through high school, I was drawn to science. I was captain of the Odyssey of the Mind team, valedictorian, giant geek. I wanted to understand more about myself, not about how I came to be, but about my future, about what would happen to me, about how I might be different from my sisters. I overwhelmed Leekie with questions about the other clones, about the type of information the DYAD was collecting. While I do think Dr. Leekie and my parents both tried not to outright lie to me, I also know that they got very good at obfuscation. I got sullen and angry. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to my parents, or to Dr. Leekie for that matter when I started college and kind of dropped off the face of the earth.

I availed myself of a scholarship to UC Berkeley and started by my undergrad in Genetics, Genomics, and Development. I started playing Rune Wars with a bunch of my classmates, started smoking weed. I learned that I had a predilection for the fairer sex. I shaved my head, let it grow back as dreads. I lost myself between the thighs of a Gender Studies major named Raven for nearly a full semester. I most certainly was not keeping up with Dr. Leekie or my parents in the way they had become accustomed. 

That’s how I learned about monitors. I was assigned a new one every year. They did my bloodwork, asked me invasive questions, and reported to Leekie. Nobody lasted longer than about a year, and they were all friendly enough, sort of wove themselves into my social circle. Very anthropological, participant-observer style. As the observed, I found myself getting pissed off at them fairly often, but I assumed they’d just put that in their reports as well.

I stayed at Berkeley for graduate school. My professors, mentors, convinced me to stay with the program. They wooed me with their labs, promised me the opportunity to work on some really exciting experiments on epigenetics. This became my passion - trying to understand what role the environment plays in cellular development. Between my stipend and some help from my parents I have been able to build a little life for myself. I rent a tiny apartment above a bakery, and go to sleep just as the bakers put the day’s work in the oven. I am a little worried about an unintentional Pavlovian trigger around bread baking, but I find it comforting. This final year I’ve gotten into a pretty good groove, sleep, read, teach, lab. I don’t usually spend much time outside a lab coat, but lately there was this girl, Shay. 

Shay is a stereotypical California dream-girl. All blonde and blue-eyed, she works at the coffee shop down the street from school. She’s studying to be a reiki master and told me she thought my chakras were imbalanced. This, after I had just picked up a dirty chai and a scone and threw a tip in the mug on the counter. I stopped short and turned back to her. “My what are imbalanced?”

“Your chakras. You’re throwing off a lot of energy here, but it’s all imbalanced. Do you feel a little off? Something in your life not going quite like you expected?”

I might have snorted. I do that sometimes when I’m surprised into a laugh. “Uh, yeah, you could say that.” See, the morning we met I’d been summoned by Dr. Leekie. When the summer was up, after my thesis was turned in and I’d been awarded my masters, he wanted me to come back to San Diego. No, that wasn’t even quite right. DYAD wanted me to come back to San Diego. Something about some findings in my medical tests they wanted to discuss, and an unnamed opportunity for me as well. I called my parents but they said they didn’t know what it was all about, so I emailed Leekie back, said I’d see him in August. I’d been flustered ever since, unbalanced even.

Shay smiled, handed me a slip of receipt paper with her number on the back. “You should call me, we could talk, maybe have dinner, and I could align those chakras for you.”

That was back in May, and I’ve been seeing Shay ever since. She has continued to try to align my chakras, and I've sublimated my worry over DYAD into marathon sex sessions. She feeds me insane vegan power-smoothies, I provide expertly rolled joints. Maybe it wasn’t the most deep and intense relationship, but I like her and I know she likes me. Maybe I don't love her in the way I am afraid she is beginning to love me, but I have high hopes that we can at least part amicably.

“Cosima! Did you hear a word I just said?” Dr. Leekie’s use of my name brought me out of my daydream. Fuck. 

“Yeah, I heard you. The geeks here at DYAD think that my line might have a flaw, some fluky, weird prion disease. And you want me to study it. You're afraid I might have it.”

“That’s almost it. DYAD wants to offer you the opportunity to study its origins, to determine whether the disease’s origins are with the clone cells or if there was something that happened epigenetically that triggered the disease. The nature.” He paused, as if to make sure I was listening, which at this point I totally was. “And I want to offer you the opportunity to study the other side, the nurture if you will. I would like to offer you the opportunity to become a monitor to the second-gen clone line.”

My head whipped up. “The what?! Nobody has ever mentioned a second-generation to me!”

Dr. Leekie smiled. I wonder if he knew how fucking paternalistic that smile was. “You didn’t have the clearance. You still don’t. But I am sure I’ve just offered you an opportunity you won’t refuse.”

“So, what’s the catch?” I stand and start pacing through his office, fingering his little models, watching him twitch as I pick them up and very deliberately put them back just a little off of where they’d sat before.

“No catch really, except that you will have to transfer your studies. The University of Minnesota has a strong program in Evolutionary Development. Their faculty will be salivating over you. I took the liberty of sending your thesis over.”

“On DYAD letterhead was it?” I try and fail to keep the bitterness out of my voice. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate all that DYAD, that Leekie, have done for me, but I need to know that what I do scholastically is my own achievement.

“Cosima, I wanted to be able to offer you a funded position. I’m not trying to pull you out of Berkeley without offering you a certain… level of support. If you agree to the monitor position you will be given a salary, you will work for the DYAD. You will have access to many of the resources DYAD can offer, be that classified reporting on the clone projects or a laboratory for your use. It is truly up to you.”

I start to pace again, can’t help the gestures that fly from my hands. “OK, so the deal is I finish my PhD in Minnesota. You get me housing, my choice.” I look, and his face remains impassive. Time to push a little harder. “And my salary. I want fifty a year, I want access to all of Leda’s documents.” This causes him to flinch. 

“The salary and housing will not be an issue. But Cosima, you know I can not provide _carte blanche_ access to Project Leda. I don’t even have access to all of those files. Frankly, I don’t know if anyone does. I will endeavor to provide you with all that I can, to answer whatever questions you may have.”

“Tell me more about this second generation of clones. What do you call them?”

“Project Timandra.”

“Of course. And why were they made? If Leda was successful, why build another line?” I know I am probably pushing him more than he is comfortable with, but I also know that Leekie has a soft spot for me, and I am not beyond using it.

“Leda was the initial project. We knew we’d been successful when we had gotten so many of you to the blastocyst stage, but at the time nobody at DYAD felt comfortable pushing the rather hazy moral boundaries, and so your line was frozen. Timandra was meant to build upon what we learned with your line, refine the process if you will. And by the time that line was complete, the moral issues had been resolved or the people with the moral objections had found their way to other lines of work. Timandra was successful, and the line was transferred for gestation. There were a number of live births. We followed the children as they grew, but there was a problem. We started losing them at a precipitous rate. That’s when I requested permission to activate Leda.” He smiled, and suddenly the paternal thing starts to make sense. “And here you are.”

“And now you want me to be a monitor, for one of these Timandras. So obviously some of them survived. Which one will I be monitoring? How many are there?”

He leaned back in his chair. That fucker knew he had me. “Her name is Delphine Cormier. She’s French. A scientist, like yourself. We have lost her a number of times throughout the years, but she’s resurfaced, starting a postdoc program in Minnesota.”

“Lost? What do you mean, lost?”

Leekie’s temple starts that throbbing thing again. “She, ahh, she seemed to slip past her monitors, moved around a lot. We lost track of her for a few years here and there, but now she has re-emerged. We have a lot of questions, questions we hope you will be able to help us answer.”

I sit, knowing too, that this is going to happen. The pull of someone so like myself was too great to ignore. I test her name out in my mind - Delphine Cormier- before asking, “Like what? Like why did she survive when her copies were failures? Like what happened in the years you lost? Like does she have this disease like the Ledas?” 

He is positively beaming now. “Yes. Just like that. And more.” 

He pulls out a sheaf of papers, unclips a pen from his breast pocket. “And if you sign here, I’ll show you all of them, get you the documentation, prepare your transfer. What do you say?”

I hold the pen in my hand. It is heavy, engraved with his name. I twirl it once, fast, around my finger and thumb before scrawling my name at the bottom of the page and try not to think about the smile he gives me now. It isn’t fatherly at all. It is predatory. But I am too intrigued to back out now.


	2. Infinitely Complex Relations

DELPHINE

I had no idea I was sobbing until I felt the sharp jab of an elbow digging into my side and heard the irritated moan of my bed partner voicing half-hearted protest.  I sat up and rubbed my face, unsurprised by the salted slick of my own tears, and shook my head.   _C’est d’accord, c’est d’accord_ \- I whispered to myself. _Il etait un reve_ \- it was just a dream, it was only a dream.  It was, in fact, the same dream as it has always been, since before I could remember being a sentient person, the same dream with only minor variations. In this version I am nine and standing on the platform of Place de Clichy but it is not busy like it usually is.  It is empty save for me (small, blonde, timid) and another version of me (small, blonde, malicious) and the distant voice of a singer setting my favorite poem to music; a soft repetition -

_The apparition of these faces in the crowd;_

_petals on a wet, black bough._

The me that is not me is not listening to the music and it catches me off guard because I love it and it takes away the fear - the fear of the other.  It is in this moment that the terror usually begins and the poetry fades - an echo of so many of my adult days.  Sometimes she lunges at me with blood in her eyes, sometimes she runs from me screaming and drops to the concrete with blood in her mouth. This time she bent forward and calmly removed her shoes,  placed them next to her small handbag, and then she jumped onto the tracks just as the metro tore into the station with a howling roar of warning.  I never actually see her die but I know that she does.  She does every time.  It is inevitable.  I can tell from the wide eyes of the conductor and the deafening crack of her bones that she is no longer even a thought in the world, she is as gone as gone can be, as if she never existed for anyone other than me and maybe the conductor, but I do not always see him.  This is where I wake up, always on the edge of her death. The other vanquished, but not by my hands.

I slide out of the sheets, careful not to wake the lightly snoring sleeper just inches away, and pad silently into the small kitchen, my whole body suddenly aware of the cold.  I am wearing nothing, this too is not a surprise, though I do not think I am naked for any particularly good reason, at least not one I can remember. The light flickers as I push the switch up and the sound of the fluorescent coming to life brings to mind the hours I spend alone in the lab, motionless and absorbed until the timer runs out and I am left flailing in darkness, trying to trip the sensor.  The sound, a faint hum and buzz, is always a comfort. The miracles of science seem to largely be on my side and for this I am thankful.

I pause in front of the refrigerator and sigh, unsure of my next move. This is not my kitchen, not my refrigerator. I turn a few small circles to get my bearings. Black granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, deep blue walls decorated with photographs of distant shores and smiling strangers.  It is nice, simple.  Where am I?  I should be alarmed but I am curious, the scientist in me always beats the pragmatist.  This is not an unusual scenario anyway, waking up naked or nearly so in a stranger’s apartment, at least not since the break up and not since the beginning of my medical studies four years ago.  And now here I am, almost at the end, twenty-nine years old and addicted to intercourse with strangers.  My mother, were she alive, would be so proud.  

I settle for a glass of water from the tap and return to the bedroom / living room of the studio, my eyes adjusting to the darkness.  The heavy curtains block the midnight sun and I imagine that the whole island is asleep save for me, a lonely expat who never quite adjusted to the nocturnal glare of being so far north.  I stand in the middle of the room and look towards the bed, admiring the slight form beneath the expanse of white cotton.  She is small, this one, smaller than the others and I cannot help but smile as I watch the tidal rise and fall of her back as she breathes.  The curve of a calf sticks out from the sheets, revealing the edges of a swirling tattoo that looks like the 17th century runic staves painted across the ceiling of the Saga Museum.  Cute.

I make note of my clothing, neatly folded and draped across the back of a chair, and piece together the events that led me here.  First there was Kringlukrain for pizza and beer, then there was Dillon for more beer, then Olstofan for Lord only knows what.  That was the point at which I began begging my classmates, Alida and Marella, to end it all and just put me in a cab back to Kopavogur, back to my efficiency and to my own bed.  Instead we ended up at Austur and I ended up in the arms of the woman now splayed out before me.  Thora.  I think her name is Thora.  I look around for something to confirm my suspicions, a pile of mail or an open bill, but only succeed in bumping my shin against a chair leg and uttering a sharp hiss - _merde_.  She sits up suddenly, the woman whose name I think is Thora, and grins in my direction, a river of soft Icelandic flowing from her bruised lips, her hair a wild tangle of sharp gold and auburn.  Maybe I did have a good reason to be naked after all.  I return the smile, faltering for words, my grasp on the ancient tongue conversational at best even though I am often mistaken for a native Icelander; there is something comforting about being tall and blonde in a sea of tall blondes.

“ _Gætirðu talað hægar?_ ”

She laughs and pats the sheets next to her, slowing her speech to the point of teasing indolence.  I strain my mind but cannot make sense of what she is saying, I am definitely still a little drunk and my throat is scratchy from too many cigarettes, too much talking over loud EDM, and perhaps too much something else.  I sink onto the bed and shut her up with a kiss, my hands snaking up her torso, fondling her small but firm breasts.  She mumbles something, this time in English, though I can barely hear her because her teeth are on my neck.  I gasp and throw my head back, determined to at least remember this round, if there is going to be another, and ask her to repeat herself.  She runs her tongue along the edge of my ear and I am suddenly very aware of the self that is myself, the dream self barely vapor as I melt into this moment with deep and languorous gratitude.  It is easy to lose one's head in the arms of a beautiful woman, especially when said woman’s hands have found their way to parts needing exploration.  Her response is both a relief and a delight, a chance to begin anew, if only for what remains of the night, or is it morning?

“So...what was your name again?”

I laugh and turn into her kisses, her gentle bites, mumbling into her ear.

“Delphine.   _Enchantee_.”

“Thora.   _Komdu sæl_ , Delphine.  Though it would seem that we have already met, at least in one way...”

I grin, pleased with myself for remembering her name, and push her into the depths of her incredibly comfortable mattress.  I will have to ask her where it came from, if I remember, but for now I am focused on other things.  I am focused on finding a common language for our desires and making her howl it into the air and space between us.

*****

It is 14:00 by the time I find my way to my own apartment, my inner thighs developing bruises and my wrist covered in the digits of Thora’s phone number.  I will not use it, but it was a nice gesture anyway.  I will likely see her again, the Icelandic capital being rather small, but I have dodged those encounters when necessary and crept into them when desperate.  It is Saturday and I want nothing more than to sleep the rest of the day away, get dinner by myself somewhere quiet, then return to the lab work that I was pulled away from yesterday by the interminably entertaining Olafsdottir twins.  My only real friends here, Alida and Marella, always focused on my sanity, always ready to drag me away from the microscope.  It is not that I am unapproachable, I like to think that I am pleasant to be around, but when I am in the lab it is as though the rest of the world just stops.  It takes a force of nature to pull me away from my slides, from my research.  I guess God saw fit to give me two such forces during the pursuit of my medical degree at the edge of the arctic circle, he probably figured I would need more than the usual distraction.

I drop my bag at the door and fall onto my bed face first with a loud, satisfied groan.  Delphine Cormier for the win.  I have watched a great deal of American television since arriving in Iceland over four years ago and I have picked up some ridiculous euphemisms. I would high five myself if I could, as I have seen so many people on television do.   Just another layer to my charm, another way to endear myself to the Sapphic population of this friendly little nation of gorgeous Viking descendents.  Thankfully I will be moving soon, to points unknown, because I am running out of women.  I roll over and eye the pile of mail that I so recently walked through, scanning for large envelopes.  Large envelopes are acceptances, small ones disappointments.  There are a few of each and I am tempted to open them all but find that my eyelids are suddenly heavy.  I strip myself of my shamefully sweaty attire - heeled boots, black jeans, a sheer white tank top, black bra, no panties (was I wearing any or did I just lose them?) - and bury myself into my dirty sheets.  I will change them later, after I read my mail, and after this much-needed nap.

*****

_The apparition of these faces in the crowd;_

_petals on a wet, black bough._

The singer is male this time.  He sounds like Morrissey but more heart broken, if that is possible.  I am a teenager, my hair a wild tangle of short curls, shorn to the skull on one side, two fading racing stripes just above my ear.  My lips are painted black and my eyeliner is severe, purple I think.  I am alone and running down the stairs to catch the metro at Rue de Boulets, I must be skipping school because the light behind me makes it look as if it is early morning.  As always, no one is in the station save for the other me, the me that is not me.  Her hair is longer and ironed straight, her lips painted a soft pink and pursed in disappointment, as if the real me is late for something.  I pause as she opens her mouth to speak, we have never spoken before, not once in all of these years, and I strain to hear as the poem song grows louder.

“Delphine, _je vous connais_.”

I shake my head no.  No.

“Delphine, _je suis toi_.”

I am trembling as I step forward, my fists in tight balls.  My own mouth moves but I cannot hear my words as the roar of the approaching train bounces through my skull.  I shake my head again and try to yell but no sound comes out.  She is smiling, her lips no longer moving but her voice inside of my head, drowning out the engine’s roar.

“ _Nous vous voyons_ , Delphine.  We all do...”

I shriek and this time my voice is loud.  Without thought I lunge for her and wrap my arms around her, pulling her down with the force of my body until we slam into the front of the engine as a single unit, a collective of Delphines hurtling through space towards a molecular explosion.  We are a tangle of limbs and teeth and crunching bone, the sound is like a flock of ravens taking flight in a hurricane.  There is blood, so much blood.

It is here that I wake up, my face streaked with tears.  Again.  I sit up trembling and rake my hands across my face, through my hair.  I should probably see someone about these dreams, maybe go to a therapist.  I will figure it out when I figure out my next move, figure out where I am going.  I am reminded, then, of the mail.  I rise, grab the pile, and return to the bed.

I sigh with relief as I tear into a rejection from Universite Paris Descartes.  Six months ago I would have been thrilled to return home, but now, no.  I am waitlisted at the University of Wisconsin, no surprise there, but I am accepted to the University of Minnesota with an actual salary, my own lab space to commandeer, and my own little team of graduate students to bark at.  I let out a low whistle and nod, pleased with myself.  My first thought is that I should call my parents, but then I remember, with the sharp pang of recent loss, that they are no longer alive to be called.  I feel my eyes burn again and find myself aggravated by the constant need to cry, the constant salty discharge.  I shake my head hard then rise, dress hastily in running clothes, and reach for a pack of cigarettes.  A jogging.  I need a good jogging followed immediately by half a pack of cigarettes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Gætirðu talað hægar?” - Can you please speak slower?  
> "Komdu sæl" - Nice to meet you.
> 
> This concludes your Icelandic lessons. You're welcome. ;)


	3. Ordained Continuous Becoming

COSIMA

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I have to google Minneapolis/St. Paul. I know where Minnesota is, sort of near the top in the middle, right? Having been a California girl my whole life, I find the idea of the Midwest more than a little disconcerting. I picture farm wives with aprons plying me with casseroles, cows, and snow. I enjoy traveling, have been all over the world with my parents, but have never considered the middle of the country as a travel destination, let alone as a place to finish out my studies, to live and work for the better part of two years. But the draw of meeting another clone, self-aware or not, is too great. How could I say no?

Dr. Leekie wasn’t lying when he told me that University of Minnesota has a good program, and I find it only a little troubling to have an email from the chair of biological sciences in my inbox before my train ever leaves San Diego. Dr. Hutchinson it seems, is pleased to offer me an assistantship and would love to have me as a Golden Gopher. I decide to delay my reply until I’m back at my apartment. I have too many questions to try to answer at the moment. Is the offer on the basis of my own scholarship? Did Leekie ask my advisors for a recommendation on my behalf? In the end will any of that matter? The DYAD Institute is where I was formed. They’ve been affecting my life from the day they decided to allow my mother to carry me to term. If they want me to finish my PhD at any school in the world, it will happen, such is the extent of their reach. I feel the familiar tug of rebellion in my gut and once again consider taking a runner, leaving all of this behind, fuck DYAD and all the rest.

Sinking back into my seat, I pull out my earbuds, my thoughts swirling too quickly for me to catch any of them for more than a moment. I need some oblivion, and it looks like it has to come in the form of Nadia Ali crooning into my ears over a deep bass beat. I close my eyes and let the music wash over me, feeling myself relax. As the train carries me northward, my thoughts begin to slow and I am once again back to the same reflections that have occupied the space between sleep and wakefulness since I was fourteen. I am a clone. Out there in the world there are others, copies of me, who do not know they are clones. We wear the same face, but is that all?

And now there’s this revelation that there is another. A different line. Timandra. Leekie says a courier will bring me all I will need to begin my work as a monitor: a laptop, hard drive, some files. He jokingly suggested that I wouldn’t need the data collection forms but the smile died on his lips when I glared at him. As a scientist I understand the need to collect data, but I still am not over the idea that I am the experiment. Leekie claims to understand this, puts on his concerned face, but he can’t really understand. Nobody could, except perhaps the other clones - my sisters and whoever remains from the other line. Delphine Cormier. I should have asked Leekie for a photo before I left. Is she like me? A postdoc, so she must be close to me in age at the very least. I wonder what she studies. And he said something about lost years. Maybe she had the spine to actually take the runner that I’ve always been so afraid to commit to. Shit. This is all pretty fucking heavy. I close my eyes and begin the breathing exercise that Shay taught me. I might make fun of her absolute belief in chakras and balance but this breathing thing is legit. It has helped me sleep for weeks now, and I credit it for getting me through my thesis defense. I take deep breaths, feeling my lungs expand to nearly their capacity before releasing the air slowly. Before I know it, I’m asleep.

*****

Back in my little studio above the bakery I consider my options. Classes start at U of M in just over two and a half weeks. That’s not a lot of time to get packed and get out there, but Dr. Leekie assures me that DYAD will do whatever I need to get me there. Looking around my apartment I try to pick and choose what will come with me, what should go to Shay or another friend or be left on the curb for the incoming flock of students. I am all about textures, love deep jewel tones, funky patterns and my space reflects that. Most everything I have was picked up at flea markets or from the curb-leavings of students who came before me, others are gifts from friends or lovers. I suppose I will bring what I can- maybe leave the heavy shit behind. Then again, if DYAD is springing for movers I’m keeping this desk. And the bed.

In order to keep myself from becoming completely overwhelmed, I pull out my supplies and roll a joint. I wonder what DYAD thinks about the consistently elevated levels of THC in my blood. Do they even test for that? I guess I’ll know soon. It doesn’t take long before the familiar lassitude of a solid high hits me. Now is the time for planning. I pull out a legal pad and make a heading - Things to Take to Minnesota: bed, desk, bookcase, weird shit I stole from the art department that time, bike. I make another list - Things to Give Away. It remains blank. I guess I’m taking all of it with me.

I flip open my laptop and pull up Craigslist for Minneapolis to see what my options might be. It takes a few pages before I see it. I don’t even bother narrowing down by price, I’m all about the aesthetic and this apartment is amazing. A gorgeous space with great light and velveteen damask wallpaper in a big old Queen Anne right near school. I copy the link and compose an email to Leekie.

  
This is my apartment. Get it for me.  
-C  


I wonder, only briefly, if he will be amused or annoyed by my cheek. In my current state, I feel like it is pretty amusing.

I lay back on my rug and consider, not for the first time, the water stains on the plaster of my ceiling. I’m busily making them into cloud-shapes when the buzz of my phone surprises me. It must be in my bag? I rummage until I find it, and notice a text message and two missed calls from Shay. Fuck. Shay. I’m going to have to tell her that I’m leaving. My doorbell rings, and I’m sure it’s Shay, but it isn’t. 

A bike messenger greets me at the other side of the door. She’s a cute butch hipster with full sleeve tattoos as well as the ubiquitous “love” and “hate” on the knuckles. I get the full elevator eyes before she thrusts a clipboard at me, pulling a pen out of an honest-to-god pocket protector in her short-sleeved oxford. I take the pen and scribble my name on the line and she hands over a small box with DYAD’s return address. I panic for a moment, unsure if you’re supposed to tip for this. I grab the smoldering joint from my antique brass ash tray and gesture to her. “Want a hit?”

She smiles and comes in, snagging the J with “love” as she slides the door shut behind her. “I only have a minute, but thanks.” She winks and I can’t help but grin back at her. “Ashley,” she says as she takes a deep hit, closing her eyes, and I want to give her credit for not shortening it to “Ash” just to score butch-points. 

“Cosima.” I wait for the comment that invariably comes when I mention my name, but she just takes another drag and nods. That’s refreshing.

“Thanks for the quick toke, but I’ve got to run. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Except I’m only going to be around for sixteen more days. And I have a girlfriend I need to break up with.

Ashley leaves and I flop back down on the floor and contemplate the water stains again before I remember the package that she brought to my door. Ripping open the cardboard I see a sleek little MacBook Air. Fuck yes! Leekie really does love me. I am sure this isn’t standard monitor issue. He got me the pretty one because I’m teacher’s pet.

I pop it open and see that he’s populated it with files. All are password protected, except the one that tells me my initial password is my first pet’s name along with my mother’s birth month and date. For a moment I wonder how he would know these things, but then I remember that he knows everything about me, and has since before I could form conscious thought and so I enter the required information.

The folder has subdirectories- health, education, social history, photos. I go for the instant gratification and click on photos. Suddenly I’m not so sure about this assignment. These aren’t snapshots from vacations, these are surveillance photos. The young woman in them clearly has no idea she is being watched, let alone photographed. She is striking. Blonde hair and brown, no...green maybe? eyes. Her hair is a wild mane of curls, and I wonder if she works to make them seem so effortless or if they really are. Here she is in an airport, lined up at customs. Now coming out of a record store, in… Iceland? And here she is in what can only be Paris, though this shot looks more like a vacation than the others. I spend a moment with this image - she looks happy here, like she knows the photographer and is comfortable and relaxed. In the others she looks tired and just... sad. Scrolling through the pictures, I watch as she gets younger, until finally she’s a baby in her mother’s arms.

I have never been a voyeur. It’s just not my kink, and now suddenly I think of all of the snapshots taken of me over the years. How many have ended up in files just like this one? DYAD must have a similar dossier on me, and this one is probably redacted all to hell. I click over on the health subfolder and learn this woman’s blood type, her height, weight, that she contracted whooping cough when she was seven. Her education has me humbled- she’s done an MD and a PhD, and now she’s been accepted at a number of schools for her postdoc. Her grades are phenomenal. How do they know she’ll go to Minnesota? This is none of my business. I stop reading, close the laptop. Delphine Odile Cormier. She’s a clone, like I am. She just doesn’t know it. And I will not be permitted to tell her. I am to befriend her. To observe. Suddenly, all the time I've spent with my monitors doesn’t seem so bad, because at least I knew I was being observed, that nothing was sacred.

My cell rings again, and I pick it up, a concerned-sounding Shay on the other end. I make plans to go over to her place in a few hours, promise to bring wine and dinner. She knows something is up, but doesn't press. I don't want to lie to her, and will do my best to stick close to the truth of the situation, but it is going to come as a shock. As far as we'd ever discussed, I was going to continue my PhD at Berkeley, had never even considered other programs. I'm a terrible liar. As someone who is in near-constant motion, when I lie I go still and for people who know me at all it is a giant tell. I think again of the conversation in Leekie's office, of the files on the shiny new laptop. I still want to go, to learn more about my own biology, to study the second clone line, to get to know another person like myself. The draw of the new data, new experience is too strong, even knowing all of the bullshit that I'm about to tread through. 

The changing shadows on the ceiling clued me into the fact that I'd been zoned for a while. I don't love losing time, but it also feels like maybe my brain just needed to disengage for a while to process all that I'd learned. The BART schedule on my phone lets me know that if I hurry I can grab a bottle of wine and some falafel and get to Shay's without being too egregiously late. I grab my bag and head out, still unsure of what I'll say other than I'm sorry.


	4. Recurring Struggle for Existence

DELPHINE

For once I am pleased with my transience because it has made my packing for America easier than it would have been otherwise. Today is graduation day and I am not attending, I have no real reason to, no family to congratulate me on my degree, no one to call me Doctor Cormier. Instead I am sitting on a cardboard box, smoking cigarettes one after another and drinking the remainders from my wine rack as I mentally inventory my belongings one last time. The movers will be here soon and then I will be reliant upon a single suitcase until I land in the Minnesota.

I take a healthy mouthful of lukewarm Chenin Blanc between my lips and wave my tongue absently through it before swallowing. It is 10:10, a bit early to be drinking, but it is a day of celebration, right? Perfectly reasonable to have a glass of wine or seven. Sometimes I wish I were a more relaxed person, more able to go with the flow instead of always being on guard, always looking over my shoulder. I was not always this way, was not always so uptight, but with the sudden death of my parents and the bizarre explosion of my only serious relationship it seems that this way of being is unavoidable. I have no doubt that a therapist would have much to say about it all. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, consuming the rest of the wine with a shudder and a grimace. There is nothing worse than warm white wine. Except for maybe dead parents and Earth shattering break-ups. I did not dream of the other me last night, but I did dream of Esme. It seems fitting, somehow, these being my last days in Iceland, and her being the reason I came here in the first place.

I can still see her pale face, twisted with guilt, framed by insufferably adorable bangs and thick rimmed glasses. Even then, even frozen over my pillow, tweezers in one hand and a sample bag in the other, even then she looked so beautiful. So regal and tall and long of limb with the grace of a dancer and the mind of a surgeon. I was not supposed to have been home then, but I was. I had skipped class in favor of a long bath with the neglected back issues of Charlie Hebdo that had piled up during our tenure as a first year medical students. She had come home not knowing I was there and I had caught her. Though at what I still do not quite know. I do not like to think about it. It had been a huge fight. Screaming (me). Throwing things (also me). Crying (her). She could not explain herself, though she tried; and I could not understand, though I did not try. It felt so foreign and so familiar all at once, like I was a subject on a lab table, chest cavity cracked open, the gaping maws of men in white surrounding my stilled form. 

I kicked her out right then and there, told her to come back only after I was gone, and I set the wheels in motion with a methodical expedience that to this day still astounds me. I transferred as many credits as possible, found housing, and was on a plane over the northern Atlantic within a fortnight. I have no idea what happened to her, what happened to our apartment on Rue D’Assas near Le Jardin du Luxembourg, what happened to the life we had worked for years to build together. Nor do I care. None of it was real, just like so many other things in my mess of a life.

I pause my reverie to refill my glass. It is now 10:30. The movers should have been here 20 minutes ago. I snake carefully out the window, onto the fire escape, and dangle my legs over the edge, scanning the suburban sprawl of Kopavogur, the outline of the church just to my left. I will miss it, as one misses any place they spend significant time in, but not enough to feel anything beyond a faint nostalgia. It is as if I am already gone. I will go out with some friends tonight, I will probably get foolishly intoxicated, and I will probably not make it home until tomorrow morning. I make a mental note to throw some toothpaste and deodorant into my bag before I leave for the evening and I light yet another cigarette. I think of my mother, smoking on the balcony of our country home in Beyrede-Jumet, the Pyrenees looming in the background as a younger me scolds her about the foul habit. I inhale deeply and imagine what she felt in those moments, her precocious daughter squeaking about her in the crisp morning air, her husband reading the paper inside. I would give anything to have all of that back, if only for the faintest glimmer of a millisecond.

*****

“This DJ is terrible!” I yell over the poorly disguised excuse for dubstep, the random record scratches and off beat thrum of a second bassline are enough to make me wish I had stayed in bed for the evening. I hate this. I hate saying goodbye. I also hate bad dance music. I am, nonetheless, dancing, because what else does one do in a nightclub at one in the morning on a Saturday? Alida nods in agreement as she eyes Marella from over my shoulder. Her sister is pinned between the wall and a tall individual of questionable gender sporting a rainbow mohawk. I turn with a grin to see what is transpiring and shrug as Alida giggles, yelling something incomprehensible. I throw my arms around Alida’s neck and pull her closer as we grind to the universal laws and rhythms of drunken female friendship. We carry on like this for awhile, hands all over each other and hysterically laughing, until I break away, indicating my need for a cigarette. Alida nods and turns a tight circle until she bumps into a man in leather pants who returns her drunken smile. I shake my head and work my way through the crowd towards the exit, unsure if I will re-enter the club ever again. The twins have my new U of M email address; they will write if they want to.

The rush of cold air is more of a shock than the displaced twilight on the other side of the heavy metal door. It is June and the sun will only approach the idea of setting for at least a few more weeks. This was jarring when I first arrived, but now it is just another fact of my existence, another thing that happens to me. There is a small crowd outside the door and I have no problem securing a lighter, having lost mine hours ago. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, letting the flood of conversation wash in one ear and out the other, not bothering to translate for myself. I am too drunk to be of much use to myself anyway, too drunk to make choices let alone good ones. Esme. The tweezers. My parents. Minnesota. I feel like sinking to the ground in a puddle of tears but my legs are locked in place by the force of social norms. I am a doctor now. I have my own lab. I am important. Out of nowhere I hear my own name whispered in my ear and open my eyes with a half smile.

“Remember me?”

I nod, though in fact I do not immediately remember the broad-shouldered blonde standing with her face just inches from mine, mouth smelling faintly, and not unpleasantly, of scotch and cigarettes. I take a moment to pull it all in - grey-blue eyes, the glint of a nose ring, a smattering of freckles, blunt cut chin length blonde hair - and let my smile grow. She is athletic, tightly muscled with more than a hint of the masculine, and I find myself suddenly in need of a personal trainer. Personal...trainer...oh! Right. Renata. From the sauna. A flood of memories forces my hands to her hips as I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and look up from my slouched position against the wall, the portrait of femininity.

“How could I forget, _ma cherie?_ ”

She smirks, eyebrow raised, clearly aware of and enjoying my game.

“I just saw Alida in the bathroom, she says you all graduated today…”

I nod, pulling her tight against me until I am a Delphine sandwich - wall, me, aggressively sexy woman with a very clear agenda. Farewell sleep, farewell Iceland.

“This is true.”

“So, you’re in the mood for celebrating I assume…”

I nod again. I like where this is going, I did not even have to try. She leans in conspiratorially, her palm flat against the bricks just to the right of my head, her voice low.

“You look awfully tired, doctor, I think someone ought to…”

I am already pushing away from the wall, my body flush against hers, I need no more prompting. She chuckles and slips her arm around my waist and we are walking towards Gamli Vesturbær. I imagine myself as I would look from above, drunk and weaving in the grip of the strong blue-eyed blonde, heels clicking and hair askance, cigarette loosely between my lips. I try to clear the image from my mind but it sticks, my face a mask of wanton glee to hide my scar-ridden heart, the sway of my hips obscuring any hesitation I might be feeling. I know my behavior is not healthy, but at this point I am not interested in being healthy, I am interested only in feeling. But I cannot feel a thing, have not felt a thing, since the day the door slammed behind her, the moment when the world as I knew it began crashing down around me like a crumbling ancient ruin. Since then I have dreamt the dream more frequently, since then I have been suspicious of everyone and everything. Since then it has been a constant challenge to rebuild, and it is this journey to America that my hopes are hinged upon.

Before I know it two strong hands are flat against my shoulders and I am falling. I hit the mattress with a giggle and am thankful for Renata's attention, thankful for the respite from my own thoughts. These moments of gratitude are the closest thing to connection I have been able to form in years and when they hit me it is like a flood, a brief and sordid fairytale happiness. There are whispers in my ear, from her and from the me that lives inside of my head, questions about my needs, my desires, reassurances. I arch my back and let her undress me slowly, my arms crossed behind my own head, my fingers tangled deep into my own curls. It is nice to be cared for, it is good to be wanted. She spends a great deal of time admiring details, her kisses slow and warm, and I do not rush her. I am not in charge for the moment, and this is as it needs to be. I moan for her and she responds with enthusiasm, my own voice a distant echo over the rush of blood in my ears.

Things become more serious then as we build to a rhythm steadily, our bodies tightly pressed and flowing back and forth, up and down, the friction of skin against skin and mouth against mouth leaving my head awash with light as she enters me and I am gone. It is nice to let go, it is good to to be allowed to. I float above myself, above ourselves, in total bliss, just hands and lips and arms and legs and breasts, no thoughts or words. Despite her strength and size Renata is delightfully gentle, and when it comes time for me to give to her as she has to me she becomes sweetly vulnerable until she is all sweet breathy cries; her voice high on the second syllable of my name, which she drags like her nails down my back. I am pleased with the results and maybe a little sad to be leaving the country soon but I will at least stay the night. I almost always do. It is my favorite part. I love being held.

*****

_The apparition of these faces…_

I hear the voice in my head and my eyes fly open before the dream has a chance to truly begin. Sometimes I am able to catch it, to stop it, but mostly I am powerless. I say a silent thank you to the higher powers that I caught it this time, no one wants to hear me scream at 30,000 feet. I am on the third leg of my journey to Minneapolis and am barely able to keep my eyes open. Between the tiny bottles of vodka, the airport bars in New York and Cincinnati, and the early morning work out with Renata, I am completely and totally spent. I close my eyes again and focus on pleasant thoughts - Renata’s strong hands on my ass as she lifted my cunt into her face, the throaty groan she emitted as she tasted me - I grin to myself. These are far better thoughts than the dream, far better thoughts than others that too often find their way into my brain.

I wake to the sound of the flight attendant announcing our final descent. I am half slumped into the empty seat next to me; the other passenger in my row is passed out against the window and snoring. I wipe the drool from my cheek and buckle my seatbelt as instructed before raking my sweaty palms through my hair. I grimace as I regard myself in the compact mirror I found in the bottom of my bag. My face is haggard, atrociously sleep-deprived, and a little bloated. I should have been more insistent upon getting a cab and hotel room instead of accepting Dr. Peterson’s hospitality for the evening, though I suspected from her tone that any level of insistence would have been lacking. Dr. Donna Peterson of the College of Biological Sciences was to be my own personal Virgil, my guide through the paperwork, permissions, and protocols necessary to running a lab at the large land-grant university. We had skyped from JFK, my wine glass tucked discretely behind my laptop, and she had been so openly excited, so warm and inviting and excited for me to stay in her home, that I almost did not care that I looked like a side of road weary mutton. That said, it is difficult to feel impressive when in such a state and she had used that word to describe my work, and by extension me, many times. I turned on my phone as we touched down and was tickled to see a message almost instantly.

****

**Hi Delphine this is Donna! I will be parked just outside the exit by Door 104A in the green Subaru. Let me know if you need help with your bags!**

I had to smile at the exclamation points, the almost palpable friendliness of my new colleague. I am told that not all Americans are as friendly as the ones in the upper Midwest and I am pleased with my decision to continue my work in Minnesota. I exit the plane quickly and wait impatiently at the carousel for the suitcase I will be living out of until Wednesday and am irritated when it does not immediately appear. I shoot a quick apology text to Donna, complete with exclamation points and get an almost instantaneous reply with a colon and parenthesis forming a smiling face as punctuation. I have to chuckle, even if I am exhausted, a little hungover, and extremely overwhelmed. I am in America. I already feel a little bit better.


	5. A Most Dreadful Resource of Nature

COSIMA

The Twin Cities aren't exactly the Bay Area but they are proper cities in their own right. There's nightlife here, restaurants, art, music. The river will never be the ocean, but I feel better, more grounded, with a body of water nearby. On my first day in town I found a coffee shop that also serves beer and wine that I was sure would be amazing for general grad student loitering in Lowertown. On a whim, I ducked into a tattoo parlor and had a fine line artist ink the dandelion sketch from my journal onto my forearm. I’d drawn it on the plane out here; it fit the way I’d been feeling for the last few weeks, rooted firmly within my understanding of myself yet also beginning to scatter to the four winds. Though I had to stay at a hotel for a few days, within the week DYAD had sprung for the small but amazing apartment as well as movers to bring all of my many things up the narrow staircase. I hung a few photos, a poster of daVinci’s Vitruvian Man by the front door, and unpacked most of my clothes and books before falling into my bed in an exhausted heap.

My dreams are vivid and familiar. Watercolor images of my face on strangers’ bodies, their features blending and swirling until I’m surrounded by copies of myself. They walk past me, never noticing that we wear the same features, that we are duplicates. I’ve had this dream since I was a teenager; though tonight there is a difference. My sisters fade until I find myself sitting across from the blonde- Delphine. I say her name aloud, and she looks up at me. Her face is open, trusting, while I hold up my phone to take her picture. At first she demurs before allowing the intimacy, gracing me with a shy smile, the same one as the photo from Paris. I feel myself begin to smile back at her when she places her arm on the table. She pulls out a scalpel and opens a vein on her wrist, pouring her life’s blood into my water glass while looking at me sadly. I wake up confused and shaking. I know I won’t sleep again, so I spend the early hours of the morning reading the DYAD dossier on Delphine, trying to see if I can fill in the gaps in her story.

That evening, Dr. Hutchinson invited me to meet the faculty and some of the other EvoDevo grad students who have stuck around for the summer. He is whip-smart and has a dry sense of humor that I already enjoy. My new advisor complimented my thesis without blowing smoke up my ass; she had some solid critique which I really appreciate, and I know I will be challenged as I continue through my coursework this semester. The idea actually excites me more than I thought it would. Maybe I was getting complacent at Berkeley, skating by on reputation instead of accomplishment. They don’t know me at all here, and some of my cohort already are giving me the side-eye. I think I may have stolen one guy’s TA slot by the way he keeps glaring at me when he thinks I’m not looking, but by and large the group is collegial if not totally dorky- my people. After the profs call it a night, I feel out the rest of the students, to see if we might have extracurricular activities in common and am grateful to find that I shouldn’t have any issues replenishing my stash here in the great white north.

After giving me a few days to settle in, Dr. Leekie came to visit me and introduce me to my new monitor- a young geneticist named Scott Smith. He's awkward as hell, but smart and very sweet. I don't know what he thinks he is monitoring me for, but he clearly has not been apprised of the whole clone thing. I think maybe he thinks I have a genetic disorder and maybe I do. The information that DYAD has provided about this so-called clone disease is fucking chilling- four clones from my line have already died from it and they can't pinpoint what's causing it. Dr. Leekie assures me that they have their best scientists on it, but still, I can't wait to get into a lab. I'm going to make Scott help me with sequencing- there’s got to be a reason it has manifested in some but not all of us, surely if we can find the trigger we can work on a gene therapy to stop it.

I trade my phone number with Scott and get the distinct impression that I am the first woman to whom he is not related to be added to his contacts. I promise that we will meet soon for Rune Wars and my first round of blood tests, and I am then finally left alone with Leekie. I wrote down a list of questions to ask him about Delphine, but now that I’m face to face with him I’m suddenly cautious. I don’t want him to pull me from the project, and strangely, I am already feeling protective of the young doctor. Though Leekie has only ever been a benevolent influence on my life, I can’t help but wonder what his angle is. Why choose me, of all possible researchers to put on the clone disease issue, and was my involvement so necessary that he needed to dangle the biggest carrot he has- the promise of meeting someone like myself? I have to believe it is his ego, which I know to be massive, but perhaps it is another experiment. It would be naive to think that the DYAD was only interested in the biological sciences; surely they have a whole branch devoted to psychology, and I can only imagine the research questions my monitoring another clone are about to answer, not to mention the follow-up questions. I decide to stick to the practical matters.

“So, tell me how this has to go. I know you don’t want her to be aware, but how am I supposed to get a stranger to allow me to run medical tests? And these questions, some of them are rather… intimate.”

Leekie steeples his fingers, and I prepare myself for a lecture. “Cosima. I can’t emphasize strongly enough the importance that Dr. Cormier remain unaware of your role as her monitor. At least initially, we will get her medical information from the campus clinic. If there happens to be a time you are able to get a hair sample, or saliva from a drinking glass for example, and know you will not be noticed, then yes, that would be appropriate for collection. But your role at first is to befriend her. Get close to her. She is not a trusting person and does not seem to make many friends, certainly not close confidants. I am hopeful that your shared scholastic interests will provide a jumping off point, if you will, to a friendship, and at that point, you will be able to gather some of the data we need as a matter of course during conversations. Remember, the monitoring program is essential to the experiment. Without data across the sample group, we are unable to do things like catch this damned disease before it decimates the project.”

He clears his throat when he sees me flinch. This happens sometimes with us, when he talks about me as though I am no more than a data point instead of a person and then he looks up and is reminded that I am more than my tag number. “Ah, I mean, the individuals within the project of course. Cosima, your role as monitor is to help DYAD fill in the gaps of Dr. Cormier’s life. She has been on her own for too long, and the specimens within Timandra have dwindled to such a degree that she and her sisters have become anomalous. We want to know why. I have my hunches, and they rely on an epigenetic component. Perhaps it has to do with an in-utero hormonal factor, maybe it was a chemical she was or was not exposed to as a child.” He leans close to me, lowers his voice so that I lean in too. “But Cosima, what DYAD is most concerned about are her lost years. There is some speculation that she has become self-aware and is hiding from us. I need you to find out. Can you do it?”

And suddenly there it was, laid out in front of me. Was I the scientist, or was I the science? Leekie was asking me to choose sides, to prove that I was a good little clone, and that I would put the project above the people within it. Until I knew more about what threats faced both myself and the rest of the Ledas, until I was able to learn more about Timandra, about Delphine, I would have to go about my work like a scientist- ask good questions, gather evidence, test hypothesis. But, like any good scientist, I know my place within the experiment, and for me it means that every question I ask, every lie I tell is personal. And now I am counting on the fact that DYAD and Leekie never really see me as both- the scientist and the experiment- to keep me safe while I try to figure out whose side I am really on.

*****

It takes me a few days to learn her schedule. I’m not sure if DYAD has created the snafu that has kept her lab from being ready for her, but within the first week I notice her in the large grad student genetics lab. I know that I need to engineer a chance meeting, but have been struggling with how to go about it. I think maybe I will leave my transfer paperwork lying around, see if she will pick it up, if her curiosity will get the better of her. As I try to figure out how I can possibly get her attention, my phone rings. I can’t hide my annoyance, though I try to keep it down. It’s Shay. I never would have pegged Shay as the clingy type, but she just refuses to make a clean break. I told her that I didn’t think long-distance was going to work for me, but she insisted that we try. And, because I’m fucking weak, I agreed. Idiot. I glance up at the blonde just across the table from me and shake my head as I listen to Shay. She wants to come here, wants to see me. No. No. No. This cannot be happening now. Delphine’s eyes are on me and I want to roll my own and groan but I don’t. I should be worried about the paperwork, about catching Delphine’s attention without raising her hackles, and while I have certainly succeeded in the attention catching arena, this is not exactly what I had in mind. I hear my own voice rising in a mixture of panic and irritation as I address Shay’s rising frustration.

“Stop. Just stop.”


	6. Preservation of Favorable Variations

DELPHINE

I try not to look too disappointed when Donna informs me that my lab will not be ready for a few weeks. As she prattles on about equipment purchases and budgeting and paperwork I find my mind wandering. I survey her sparsely decorated office, making note of the rather small window that is sadly out of reach and the large poster of Barbara McClintock. Where does one even find such a thing? Perhaps she had it made, or perhaps there is some specialty store that caters to the impossibly nerdy women in the Twin Cities. I make a mental note to ask her about it as soon as she is done explaining things that I am barely listening to, hopefully what she is saying is not terribly important, otherwise I will have to ask her to repeat herself. I still have not seen my own office and I grimace with the thought that it is probably in some dank, windowless basement in a distant corner of some decrepit building- such is the fate of one who is the lowest on the totem pole, such is my fate within this department as a junior level post-doc researcher.

“So, what do you think?”

I hum lowly and shake my head, breaking the rapidly tumbling slog of my own thoughts in order to cant my head to the side and smile apologetically. Donna laughs and touches my arm kindly, her eyes are crinkly at the corners when she smiles and I cannot help but feel an immediate pull towards this woman who reminds me so much of my own mother. It makes my heart ache for a brief moment and I can feel my own cheeks grow warm with embarrassment.

“Oh dear, I’m so so sorry Delphine, here I am rambling on at mach twelve and you probably have no idea what I’m even talking about. I forget sometimes that English isn’t your first language…probably because you speak so eloquently...”

I do my best not to snort with laughter, always thankful when others think I did not understand them instead of the truth, that I was not listening to them. This is how it often is, something someone says will remind me of something else and suddenly I am off to the races, my mind spiralling deeper and deeper, away from the core of a problem or the subject at hand and on to the periphery of the wild expanse of my mindscapes and dream worlds. Donna’s face is so warm, so open, that I am almost inclined to admit that I was not listening. Almost.

“ _Desole_...eh...I am sorry, Donna. It has been a long week and sometimes…”

I gesture impotently and try to mirror back the older woman’s warmth mixed with a touch of sheepishness in my smile. I wonder sometimes if others are as deliberate with their actions as I am, does the rest of the human race obsess over how they look and sound to others? This is probably why I have such difficulty making friends, this and the fact that there is not a soul on this Earth that I trust. Not even Donna.

“Of course, of course. I was asking if you wanted to see your office?”

I nod enthusiastically and rise to follow my mentor who is already halfway through her own door, speaking quickly once again, her hands in constant motion. I wonder if this is an American thing, this hand gesturing while speaking. It is a bit beyond my comprehension, for even though my mind is constantly in motion, I try to not reflect the manic revelry in my body.

“So, I’m told that your research is being funded by an outside grant from some crazy Canadian research institution, I can’t remember the name, something quick and related to chromatid, oh! DYAD! I think it’s DYAD...and so you’ll be stationed near your lab for easier donor access because that’s how these things work, lots of cocktail parties and smiling nicely in front of petri dishes which should not be a problem for you, right?”

She turns and winks as I laugh, not quite following what she means but not wanting to look like an idiot. I had no idea that my research was being funded by anything other than the University itself and am curious about how a Canadian facility knows about my small body of work, how they found out about me while I was deep in the frozen north. I follow Donna around the corner, trying to hide the confusion and concern from my face.

“I think you’ll find your office to be not only conveniently located, but…”

We pause at the end of a long corridor and she gestures to a lightly frosted glass door with a chest level placard that reads **Dr. Delphine Cormier MD, PhD | Department of Immunology.** I gasp as I catch a glimpse of my new professional home and turn to Donna with a shocked expression.

“ _Non, non_ , something cannot be right here…”

“It’s been empty for months and we all wondered who was getting the promotion! I think they even brought in new furniture…”

She gestures towards the door and I enter. Two of the remaining three walls are bright with the light of tall windows overlooking the quad. The furniture is sleek and large, the desktop as big as my bed. I shake my head again, this is definitely not going to earn me any friends but it is hard not to fall in love with the space.

“Donna, I cannot…”

A male voice interrupts my protestation and I turn to regard a handsomely dressed bald gentleman with the faint ghost of a lisp and deep brown, almost black eyes. As he strides forward I take his extended hand and find his skin dry and slightly warmer than expected, my eyes are pulled immediately to the faintly throbbing vein on his temple and I wonder quickly if he suffers frequent migraines.

“ _Ce n’est pas grave, Delphine!_ Welcome to the University of Minnesota, and to your new office. I am Doctor Aldous Leekie and it is a pleasure to meet you.”

He shakes my hand firmly then offers a cordial nod towards Donna who has become suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet. She returns the nod and touches my arm, muttering something about getting back to work and seeing me later before she retreats beneath the passive gaze of Dr. Leekie. He watches her retreat for an almost uncomfortable amount of time before turning back to me, once again all smiles.

“So, you are settling in nicely it would seem.”

I nod, still taken aback by the grand office, the floor to ceiling bookcases already stocked with materials, and the sudden appearance of this black clad doctor.

“ _Oui, merci_ , I am.”

“Good, good. I am so happy you made it here and that Donna has been taking good care of you. I’m terribly sorry about your lab not being ready, but we wanted to make sure that you would have everything you needed in order to move forward with your fantastic work, so if you would just send me a list of what you want I will make sure you get it sooner rather than later.” 

He pauses and hands me a card. It is thicker stock than usual and black in color with the faint hologram of a honeycomb pattern as a backdrop. I turn it over and read Dr. Aldous Leekie - Director, and suck in a sharp breath.

“I do not understand…”

I am at a loss for words as I twirl the card between my fingers, confused, my mind spinning out of control. Dr. Leekie’s smile is warm but there is a coldness in his eyes, a sort of calculated slant that makes me frown internally as I draw my metaphorical cards tighter against my chest.

“Yes, well, we wanted you to have a chance to settle in before your work truly begins. I do hope you like your office and I would love if you would attend a little talk I’m giving on campus in a few days. I’ll make sure you get the information.”

I nod and smile politely, taking his hand once again.

“I’m afraid that I must be off, your key is in the top drawer. I will see you soon, Delphine. _Au revoir._ ”

I open my mouth to respond but his back is already toward me, his heavy stride carrying him quickly down the hall. I shake my head and lean back against the desk. What the hell is going on? I do not understand, and I do not like it.

*****

I am interrupted by a sharp voice making terse conversation a few feet to my left. Normally I am wholly absorbed while in the lab, but something does not feel right. If this were my lab I would not allow cell phone use during work hours, but this is not my lab, this is a large graduate student free for all in the bowels of the genetics building, my own lab will not be ready for weeks. I look up and blink away the brief double vision, ready to shoot an irritated glare towards the speaker, but am arrested by the sight of quick hand movements and the glint of metal rings and clinking bracelets.

“Stop. Just stop.”

The speaker’s eyes meet mine and I see that they are brown behind black plastic frames, narrowed in frustration and anger at the situation. She grimaces a quick apology in my direction and I wave slightly as if to say no big deal. She lowers her voice to the level of a distant, threatening thunder but I can still hear her.

“No, no you cannot come here…”

I try to look back to my slide but I cannot think anymore, I am too interested in the conversation; too curious about who is on the other end, where they are, and why they would want to come to Minnesota.

“Because...I have a job. Come on!”

I look up again. This time I openly stare. Nobody else seems to notice that this poor woman is probably in the midst of a breakup via the telephone whilst watching cells divide slowly. She is turned slightly away and I take a moment to appraise her; short and slight but tightly muscled, with a mess of dark dreadlocks piled atop her head and the hint of dimples, though it is hard to say because she is definitely not smiling. I jump back a bit as she hangs up and mutters a curse, letting the phone fall onto the black lab table with a clatter. I try to look away before she catches me staring but I do not make it and am forced to mumble a no problem in response before she begins hastily gathering her things and shoving them into a battered red shoulder bag. 

She does not look at me again as she stalks towards the exit, ankle boots clicking in a raging staccato rhythm. I watch her leave and sigh softly, schooling my thoughts back to the present, to the culture that is dying before me, to my research which keeps getting interrupted by meetings and parties and well-intentioned new colleagues. I have been here for nearly two weeks and all I’ve managed to do is drink too many bottles of wine, teach my department how to curse in French, flirt with but not touch pretty much every member of my department under forty regardless of gender, obsessively research the illusive DYAD Institute, and now become intrigued by a graduate student who is clearly entangled in something that I should just stay away from. I have been that woman before. I do not have time for that now.

I move to look back into the microscope, excited to lose myself in the samples that have managed to hold my attention for more than five minutes, when a hint of white hits the periphery of my vision. Her table should be empty, but it is not. I reach across the space and grab the piece of neatly creased paper and skim it, catching the important bits typed out in bold Times New Roman.

DECLARATION OF INTENTION TO TRANSFER  
NIEHAUS, COSIMA  
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY  
Ph.D. CANDIDATE - EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT

I scan her grades and let out a low whistle, UC Berkeley, practically a 4.0, _merde_. Without thinking I stand and grab my things, leaving my cultures behind for someone else to deal with. Cosima Niehaus. An interesting name, Cosima. I find her in the hallway just outside of the bustling lab, her back is to me but her lab coat clad shoulders are shaking from her quiet sobs. I hesitate for a moment then reach out and touch her shoulder. She turns slowly, her eyes a bit red, though she seems unsurprised, as if she knew that I would follow.

“I...I am...sorry. You just forgot this in the lab…”

She half smiles and I cannot help but notice the depth of her eyes, the glint of a nose ring. I feel myself smiling awkwardly even though I have interrupted what is likely a sad or serious moment for her. She thanks me as I nod and turn to leave, but I cannot leave just yet. There is something about her, something… I turn with a force not my own and I hear my voice, though I am not thinking as I speak.

“I will admit, though, I did peek. You are a transfer student? Your grades are amazing.”

She laughed then and flashed a brilliant smile, confirming my earlier suspicions with the faintest hint of dimples. Adorable. I return her smile, shifting awkwardly from heel to heel as she wipes her eyes, laughing softly.

“Thanks, sorry. I mean, I’m not usually like, like this…”

I shake my head and lean against the wall. I cannot stop myself from speaking and do not even bother worrying about it. I can worry later, in the comfort of my little apartment with a bottle of wine, if I need to.

“ _C’est d’accord_...um...bad break up?”

She nods, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling for a moment, her own body leaning against the bare white walls as she sighs deeply.

“Yeah well, we are nineteen-hundred and eight-five miles apart…so...”

I giggle at the exactness of her measurement and nod knowingly.

“Yes, well, long-distance never works, right?”

I wrack my brain for something else to say, something intelligent, but I am coming up empty. I do not know why I am talking to her at all but I keep going.

“So, you are in microbiology two?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m evo-devo, so it’s a requirement. What about you?”

I shake my head and smile a bit guiltily, preparing to admit obliquely that I am an instructor and not a fellow student.

“Immunology. I study host-parasite relationships. I will be teaching a section of microbiology two, but not until the spring…”

She straightens up sheepishly and I pray that I have not frightened her off, that perhaps I will see her again, that maybe even we could be friends. Though there is something about her, something strange, something I cannot place. She offers her hand and I am flooded with relief, if anything I will know her and have a chance to figure out what it is about her that is bothering me so much.

“Cosima…”

“Delphine, enchantée.”

She shakes her head quickly, her eyes darting away for the briefest of seconds before she looks me square in the face, her smile impossibly bright as she returns my native greeting.

“Enchantée.”


	7. Processses Highly Developed

COSIMA

Holy watershed, that was not how I meant for that to go. Not any of it. Not Shay, not Delphine… fuck. And yet, maybe it was for the best that it wasn’t forced. Maybe it was for the best that our first interaction be based on something real rather than something completely contrived. I thought I’d feel more in control, but between Shay and those eyes- I was right, green- I was unmoored. No, that’s not how I meant for any of that to go at all. At least she took my bait, such as it was, and now she knows my name. And… well, I can’t help but think that she wanted to stay, to talk more, that ‘enchantée’ felt like an invitation.

I know that I am supposed to record this encounter, mark the date and the time, my attitude toward the investigation, my perception of my subject’s emotional state, the contents of our conversation, but I am unsure how to proceed. I don’t think there is a precedent for this, how did I feel knowing that she and I share something so basic? Maybe the Germans have a word for this, but my English is failing me at the moment. She was, she is, more than I had expected. And I am absolutely sick with guilt while simultaneously hoping she looks me up in the student directory, comes by the lab, anything really. I know so much about her, and all she knows of me are my grades, my name, and that I clearly have issues in the relationship department. Fuck.

Dr. Leekie had said that they were giving her a lab, making her some kind of DYAD fellow. He wanted the chance to see her again, to interact with her. I could tell from our last meeting when he asked me my thoughts on the dossier that he is invested. He wants desperately to check on his experiment. She is a challenge, a mystery to him. The man is a genius, and I will admit that when he gets on a roll he can be charismatic, but what he really loves is a challenge. I think that’s why he is so pleased with having me here. After all of my time in college trying to give my monitors the finger, lying on my reports, having other people piss in cups for me, he finally has me under his microscope again, and now he wants her too. And I’m the one to hand her to him.

I decide that I will try to play it cool. I’ll just go about my business, continue to go to class, work on my homework, get through some of this reading and see if we reconnect. The department is not that big, especially if you consider just the graduate students. Chances are good that we will run into one another in the library, or in Snyder. I could always go to her lab, feign surprise that she is with DYAD, see if she’d like to go to Leekie’s Neolution lecture. I’ve seen it before- it is one of his better spiels though I don’t buy it. For all of his talk, it absolutely is eugenical. Self-directed evolution is one thing, but I am, the Ledas and Timandras are, living proof that DYAD has designs on creating human specimens. I don’t buy the premise that they were just trying to see if it was possible for a minute. There had to be a larger goal in mind. Human cloning is taboo for a reason, and there had to be a payoff big enough for DYAD to overcome the barriers against it.  


Concentration is an issue. I have to keep reminding myself that while I may be undertaking this covert monitoring operation, my coursework is real. If I flake out, I will never be the third Dr. Niehaus. In the interest of buckling down, I pull out my moleskine and color code my responsibilities. I need to get Scott to help me with some sequencing. The robot they use here is apparently a hot commodity, and I haven’t got the social capital yet to skip the line. Scott does. Leekie has offered to run the samples at DYAD, and I may let him do so, just to see if my samples and his match. I have a ton of reading to do, but likely will not do much more than skim, if that, since I have eighty Intro to Human Biology exams to grade. I could kill Professor Rosenblum for giving essays so early in the semester. It doesn’t take long before my week is laid out before me in all of its rainbow glory. Between coursework, teaching, research, and my slowly burgeoning social life, it is no wonder I have been feeling like a spinning top. Especially when all I could think about were green eyes and _enchantée_ and lost years. What had she been doing? Was she hiding? Would she run from me as well?

I know that if I stay at my apartment I will not get anything done. I’ll roll a joint and sit in the sunbeam that streaks into my kitchen/livingroom and I will marvel at my tiny and beautiful space. I text Scott instead, asking that he meet me at the coffee shop so that we can talk monitor business and sequencing, and the latest episode of Dr. Who. The baristas already know me there, and I have a usual. This makes me inordinately happy. I find a spot in the corner and pull out some of the essays to grade while I wait.

“That bad is it?” Scott’s voice surprises me, and I jump a little as he sits, coffee in one hand and a plate with two pan au chocolate in the other.

“Oh god, was I commenting aloud again? I just got my first creationist essay ever. This just doesn’t happen at Berkeley.”

I grin as Scott laughs, the absolutely quintessential nerd chuckle, complete with snort, is so adorable I can hardly stand it. He’s straight from central casting and is going to be my buddy, whether he knows it yet or not. 

“It was just the look on your face. Like you smelled something bad.” He snorts again, and bobbles the plate before saving it. “I got you a chocolate thing. They’re really good.”

“Hey, thanks man. Have a seat. Let’s talk. So, you’re what? Just writing at this point, or are you still working on your research?”

He sighed, the sigh of the weary grad student. “Both, really. My committee wants me to follow another line of evidence before I can really get into the meat of my dissertation, so I’m rocking the lab tan.”

“That’s rough dude. So, have you worked with DYAD long?”

I don’t miss him squirming in his seat for a moment, or the way his eyes don’t quite meet mine when he answers. “Actually, no. I was approached this summer about the project. They said it would be a good resume builder, but I’ve never actually worked with human subjects before.” He flicked his eyes to meet mine. “I’m more of a component parts kind of guy.”

I actually felt a little bad for him, god knows I’d been having my own issues around feeling like a creep with this monitoring shit. “Listen, don’t sweat it. I’ve been doing this a long time. You don’t have to feel weird about it.”

The relief was immediate. We had better never play cards, because he wears his feelings on his perfectly creased plaid sleeves. “Oh. Oh good, that’s great. I… have you seen these questions? I feel like I shouldn’t even be asking them, certainly not to study a genetic disorder.”

“Hey Scott. I’m going to tell you something right now, something that will freak Dr. Leekie out, but you should know…” He stops me there, waving his hands.

“No! No! Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it. I can’t be the one that messes up the experiment. I never should have said anything at all. I’m sorry Cosima. My first official day as a monitor and I’m already a mess.”

I reach out and touch his arm, and his eyes are drawn to my hand. I look too- nothing out of the ordinary there. Fresh tattoo on the forearm is a little red, but no big deal. Standard number of fingers, silver rings glinting on each. Maybe he isn’t a toucher. I pull my hand back and he visibly relaxes. “No, dude. I’m sorry. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. If you don’t want to ask me something, just give me the questionnaire, and I’ll just fill it out for you. But really, I’m not shy.”

“I just need this experience, I need the money, and honestly they made it sound like it would be easy. I just have to hang with you some, answer some questions and have you answer some questions.”

“It’s cool Scott. Are we supposed to start today? I’m an open book.” I throw my hands in the air and sink back into the overstuffed chair, careful not to knock over my pile of graded essays.

“Actually, Dr. Leekie said that you would do this, and that I could just log my data at the end of every week. He says I’m not supposed to let you take the questionnaire from me. Something about keeping the data normalized.”

“Yeah, he didn’t like my answers before. He knows you’ll edit them.” I grin, and am grateful when he grins back. “So, listen. I need your help with something, and I think you might be the only person I’ve met so far who can give me the story. I need to run some sequences- not a full array, I just want to look for anomalies between a couple of samples. Can you help me with that? There’s like, some kind of line for the robot, and nobody wants to let me jump in. But surely with your research you get dedicated time, right?”

His shoulders square and he nods. “Yeah, I get dedicated lab time on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the mornings. What are you looking for exactly?”

“I’m looking for mutant alleles between bands q21 and q31” 

I watch his eyes grow large, and he leans in. “Like for cystic fibrosis?” I have him now. God, I love science. There’s nothing quite like someone who shares your completely ridiculous passion for esoteric details.

“Yeah! Except not. I mean, I’m not exactly sure what the disease looks like, except that it can often present in pulmonary symptoms.”

“What, like a whole new disease? Really?!”

“Yeah, I think so. Or DYAD thinks so. I want to see the samples. They seem pretty sure that it is a genetic illness though, and that they have enough samples to try to find where the mutation lies.”

“You know, the rumor mill says that there’s a new DYAD fellow- some French doctor. I think she’s in immunology or pathology or something, but my buddy tells me that her new digs are pretty sweet. And I guess they’re springing for a whole new lab. Maybe if you made nice with her, you wouldn’t have to fight for sequencer time.”

I try to keep my features schooled, but knowing me I’ve blown it. Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t play cards either. “Yeah, I think maybe I met her the other day. She seemed ok, maybe a little shy or something. I don’t think her lab is done yet though.”

“Well, since you’re kind of DYAD, and she’s DYAD, maybe you have an in, huh?”

Suddenly I’m terrified that Scott is going to fuck this up. He wouldn’t mean to, he’s like a puppy with oversized paws. “Listen, Scott. I need you to do me a solid and not mention my connection to DYAD to people, ok? You know I’m a transfer student, and some people are already a little uptight about me being here. I don’t exactly move through the world quietly.”

“Oh, yeah. OK, sure. I mean, I guess it is kind of weird. I hadn’t really thought about it.” He makes the universal sign for zipping one’s lips and I try and fail to not laugh.

“Thanks. I really appreciate it. You wanna blow this place and maybe go play PS4 at my house?”

“What?! PS4? Consoles are for suckers. PC master race all day! You should come to my apartment. I have a 46 inch plasma. We could play Final Fantasy?”

Once again, he’s on my side. He’s almost too easy, and I know I’m going to end up liking him, I just have to remember that no matter what, I can’t actually trust him. This is how DYAD fucks you over, how this whole thing has made me feel like I’m schizophrenic. I am forever trying to figure out what’s real, what’s me, what’s my monitor, if we’re really friends, if we’re telling one another the truth or somehow pushing DYAD’s agenda. And now I’ve signed up to do the same to Delphine.


	8. Forms Simple and Complex

DELPHINE

This is not a dream. This cannot be a dream. I know this to be true because in my dreams the other me and I are always underground, and this time we are above ground, waiting for the bus on Erie Street just south of the U of M Medical Center where I have just come from a long overdue physical. I can feel my eyes go wide, as wide as dinner plates, as she turns and lowers her hood from across the street. Her hair is dyed black and her lips are stained a deep purple, but there she is, the other me all the same. She is at the southbound bus stop and I am at the north, her mouth twisted in a knowing smile while mine is contorted in fear. No. No. No. This is not real. I close my eyes and lower my face, turning the volume up so that Yelle is even louder in my ears, I need her to drown out the sound of the blood rushing through my skull - _jamais un simple hochement de tete comme un adolescent timide dans une fete...j’adore...._ Suddenly I am the child at the feast, I am the main course, and I am ravaged. This is not a dream, but it is also not real. It cannot be.

When I look up she is gone and the bus driver is gesturing wildly from behind the wheel and speaking, but I cannot hear him over my painfully loud music. He recognizes me from my many late night journeys across campus and smiles as I bounce onto the bus with four thousand apologies. I take a seat behind him and ask him about his children, his wife. His name is Brian and he is kind, harmless. One of the few people I think I can say that about with certainty… though now I cannot be sure because I cannot be sure of anything, really. As Brian talks about his youngest son I slip back into my recent memory, trying to freeze her image into my mind. She looked right into my eyes, she saw me and knew me, knew us. Her eyes were my eyes, wide and hazel, and her hair was the same wild mess, but unnaturally colored and shorn close to her skull with stars shaved into one side. She had on a black skirt, black fishnet stockings, tall boots, and a grey hooded sweater. I think I remember a cigarette hanging from her lips, yet another thing we have in common. 

I nod politely as I half listen to Brian’s stories and manage to answer his brief questions before I exit at East Lake and 34th, wishing him a good night. As I approach the dimly lit entrance to my apartment I half expect to see her there, to see the mirror eyes boring into me as I fumble for a lighter, dig furiously for cigarettes. Maybe she was not real, that girl, maybe I am just tired. I have been in the lab for more than ten hours a day, I am barely sleeping, and when I am not splayed out on my couch with an article I am at yet another mixer. The DYAD event that Dr. Leekie described upon our first and only meeting is tomorrow night and all I want to do is fall into a four day stupor of radio silence rather than attend yet another lecture bookended by cocktails. But I cannot do that now. I am Doctor Cormier, rising star researcher and everyone’s favorite francophile. It makes me feel like a circus animal, the smiling and the preening and the repetition of bad high school French lessons and horror stories about travelling throughout Europe as a middle-aged American - _oh my god the metro is soooooo confusing_. I light my cigarette and inhale deeply, rolling my eyes despite my lack of an audience. I must have imagined it, must have had a flash of one of my many nightmares in my waking hours because I am exhausted, that girl was not real. I am the only me I know...how could there be another me? It is not possible.

I finish my cigarette and walk up the narrow stairs to my small apartment just above a barely ever open music shop specializing in strange looking stringed instruments and leather drums. It is cozy here, the walls are brightly painted and the furniture I hastily ordered while sitting in Donna’s suburban kitchen mostly fits in. I could be at home here, as at home as anywhere else. It is, afterall, not the Pyrenees, and it is certainly not Paris. The piece de resistance of my space is the deep marble tub which I set to filling even before I drop my bag next to my bed, even before I retrieve a glass of wine. My thoughts are fast and difficult to pin down, but I find that they bounce back to a certain set of brown eyes, a certain smile. Cosima. I let my mind replay the conversation as I shed my clothes and sink into the almost painfully hot water, my hand clutching a deep pour of marsanne which is not nearly as wretched tasting as I anticipated, but also not terribly good.

I take an inventory of her features, what I can remember, as I push the other me to the back of my mind where my nightmares live. Adorable would be the perfect word for her if she were not so intensely sharp, so wildly intelligent. Not that grades are a measure for everything, but they are a good place to start, and hers were next to perfect. Not to mention the breadth of coursework she has engaged in throughout her studies - what premed student has time to take Eastern Philosophy or Introduction to Victorian Literature? An active mind, she has a seriously active mind. And active hands, always touching her hair and her face, always moving in explanation. When Donna does this I am confounded, but my brief interaction with Cosima has me newly converted to the dark side, I could watch her talk like that for hours. 

I noticed other things too, things I wish I had not, because now I cannot stop thinking about them. I sigh and crack my shoulders, it has been weeks since - I shake my head. This is always the question with interesting women, do I want to be her or do I want her? It would seem that my subconscious brain made the decision before I was even aware because I feel my own hand between my legs and I close my eyes with a sharp gasp. It has been entirely too long. I am slow with myself, not really focused on an outcome as I let my brain tumble about. I am not out of the closet at work, though I never really considered myself in a closet really, such a strange metaphor, and yet I certainly do not want to earn myself the same reputation as I did in Reykjavik. Flirty maybe, but promiscuous? No. Certainly not. And she is a graduate student, a little younger than me, but not that much probably, but still a student, and I am a fellow. Are there rules against that? America seems like a lovely and open and easy place, but not everything can be so easy.

I feel the familiar low grip in my abdomen and hear my own voice whispering nonsense into the growing darkness of night as I try to turn the thoughts off. They refuse to stop. Is she gay? Was the other end of the line consumed by the frantic sobs of another woman? Not that it really matters, because I not interested in anything lasting, so nothing matters because... I moan suddenly and find quick release, my arm pistoning swiftly until I come down from the edge, my wine glass sloshed with bubbles from the overflowing tub. Whoops. I shake my head and rise quickly, ashamed of my own thoughts. No. Delphine. Do not. You must not. You cannot. Thinking about it is one thing, but acting on it? Absolutely not. Besides, what little free time I have should be devoted to actual sleeping, not trying to sleep with someone else, for once.

I drain the tub and dress quickly, wrapping my hair in a towel before trotting down the stairs for one last cigarette before bed, a newly filled wine glass and keys in hand. I feel lighter than when I first got home, despite the heated thoughts of Cosima, and I am humming as I hipcheck the door to the outside world. This lightness, sadly, seems destined to remain a temporary affair however. I gasp at the sight of her, casually leaning against the brick wall across the street, casting the nub of a just finished cigarette into the gutter. I mutter instinctively - _the apparition of these faces_ \- before the world sinks into darkness.


	9. Individuals Highly Variable

ADA

My first thought: how is it this fucking cold in September?  
My second thought: why am I in fucking Minnesota?

Those bitches, my bitches really, are so fucking annoying sometimes. Sure, they bankrolled this whole operation, got me a decent apartment and made some calls so I could land a temporary job and what not, but it still eats me that I’m the one who has to do this, that I’m the one who has to find her. On paper it all made sense, I was the unattached one, the jobless wanderer, what was it that Claire had called me? A grifter? Doesn’t matter, Claire is annoying. But Minnesota? Fuck this. It’s freezing and everyone is way too nice and the alcohol content of the beer is lower ON PURPOSE. Who ARE these people? And for that matter, why is this other version of us, probably the classiest version from what I’ve seen, shacking up here of all places? Claire said she was a doctor or some shit, so why the fuck isn’t she working in a hospital? It doesn’t make sense, just like my being this close to fucking Canada doesn’t make sense. Fuck. I am digging through my bag angrily for yet another cigarette when I feel the clone phone vibrate, I narrow my eyes and scowl - it’s Jordana, it’s always Jordana.

“Yeah?”

Her voice is a static-laden crackle. She is probably in her basement rec-room or her ginormous garage, anything to not be heard by her idiotic husband who she is totally convinced is spying on her or something. I keep suggesting that perhaps she should take some Xanax or lobby for a good deep dicking but she says that wine is her drug of choice and that my suggestions are pornographic and offensive. Apparently that’s one of the many glitches of marriage - no more deep dicking.

“Ada, Jesus, we’ve been waiting since your text, did you talk to her yet?”

“Nah.”

I hear her frustrated sigh and can almost see her pacing between the cars in her perfectly suburban three car garage with her impeccably straightened brown hair and insanely thin eyebrows. That woman has a plucking problem for sure, probably because she’s bored as hell in sunny Atlanta. I’d give my right arm and ovary to be somewhere warm right now.

“Ok, but she saw you?”

“Yeah, she definitely saw me.”

“What did she do when she saw you?”

I hear Claire in the background and roll my eyes, of course they’re together while I’m out here on the mean streets of St. Paul trying to convince some poor unsuspecting French bitch that she is a clone and that technically makes her my sister and that we are all part of some fucked up experiment and potentially government property. I take an insanely deep pull from my cigarette and pray to the gods that are listening that my dealer comes through later, otherwise it’s gonna be a long night.

“God Jo! I dunno, I mean, she just looked down. Like she kinda knew or something and didn’t want to know and so she just went into some weird denial spiral…”

“So where are you now then?”

“I’m outside of her apartment. She’s a smoker, she’ll be out eventually.”

Jordana’s voice is cut off and replaced by Claire, the voice of reason.

“Ada, hi. How are you?”

“Gee Claire, thanks for asking! If you must know…”

“No, I really actually mustn’t, but I asked out of politeness. What are you doing outside of her apartment, it’s 11 pm!”

“And?”

“And...don’t you think that’s a little creepy?”

I’m about to answer when I hear the scrape of metal on metal. I beat a hasty retreat from the conversation and toss the clone phone back into my bag in a way that would have Jordana spitting nails. I am forever breaking things and she has had to replace my phone twice at considerable cost. Such a tool. I watch the door slowly open and I try to look as nonthreatening as possible, not an easy thing, but hey, I do what I can. She is a bit taller than me, which is funny because we are genetically identical, but whatever, maybe she just has really good posture or something. I toss out my cigarette, cock an awkward half smile, and am about to just play it cool and say her name when she stares straight at me, all wide-eyed and full of feeling and I remember again what it felt like the first time I saw one of us, the first time I saw Claire. I feel an instant love for her, for Delphine, all wrapped up in a towel and pajamas, looking like a drowning puppy, and I walk towards her with my palms up. I stop when she speaks, though I can’t tell what she is saying because she is shaking, and then she is falling.

“THE FUCK!”

I rush to catch her but she is slumped against the wall, crying. Ok, so not passed out, that’s good, but crying is also not exactly what I was going for either. I grab her by the arms and she lets me pull her upright. I hold her up by the biceps - she’s stronger and heavier than I expected - and she looks into my eyes and I am totally, 100% freaked the fuck out. I’ve never been the one to break the news, never been a first for another version of us, and I feel my heart in my throat, choking my speech.

“Hey...hey...it’s ok...umm…”

She shakes my hands off and reaches up to touch my face. Shit is getting seriously fucking weird now. I want to step back but I don’t because...well...I don’t know...maybe because I know how she’s feeling? I let her run her fingers over my face and I hear her laughter over her tears as one strange mix, like an emotional wrecking ball.

“ _Mon dieu_ , you are real, you are really real.”

I nod and do the only thing I can think of. I hug her. And she hugs me back, her whole body shaking with laughing sobs. I flash back to the moment I first saw Claire, try to think of what she said when she held me in much the same way in a back alley behind a club, the needle at my feet. I try to channel her, the calm and poise that make my curatorially inclined sister so much better at these things than me. Fuck, even Jordana would be better at this, but here I am, my arms around a sobbing copy of myself, my face damp from her hair and what are probably my own tears. I hug with a fierce strength that is beyond my usual human contact and I nod against her shoulder.

“I am. I am real. You’re not alone...and there are more of us.”

She nods against my shoulder in response. It’s like she already knows, even though we were all certain that she didn’t. It was Claire that found her, through another clone in Russia, a government lackey named Nina with KGB connections who was able to run some facial recognition software through the European databases. Claire thinks there are probably a few more of us, but she isn’t exactly sure how many. She’s the smart one, I leave those questions to her. I’m the shifty one, the one who’s good at picking locks and stealing shit. We weren’t even going to reach out to Delphine at first, Iceland being so fucking far away, but then Nina called and said she was on the move and so now here I am, holding her in Minnesota. I really wish that she had picked somewhere else to land, but whatever. I feel her body pull away from mine and even though her eyes are all red and puffy I have to admit that she is beautiful. We all are, really, all stunning in our own right. At least we have that to thank our creators for. I speak as slowly as possible, trying not to curse, trying to make a reasonable first impression like Jo and Claire coached me to do so that she doesn’t bolt. Not that it matters now, I know where she lives.

“Sorry about that, pretty fuhh...freaking shocking, I know.”

I extend my hand and she takes it, her eyes never leaving my face.

“I’m Ada.”

“Delphine…”

“Yeah, I know. We know.”

I shake my head at how insane that sounds but she is smiling so I keep going.

“We meaning the others, um, Jordana and Claire. They’re like us, and there are more, we think, but you’re the first one we’ve managed to track down by ourselves. Well, not exactly by ourselves, there’s another one of us, Nina, she’s Russian, but I’ve never talked to the bit...to her. Only Claire has…”

I let my voice trail off and chew my lower lip to stop myself from talking anymore, this is so fucking weird, I have a newfound respect for Claire and her ability to stay perfectly calm at all moments, even if she is a condescending bitch sometimes. Delphine nods and gestures for her door.

“Would you like to come up, Ada? I do not have much in the way of food, but I do have wine…and a great many questions...if you do not mind.”

I nod and exhale the deep breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

“Yeah, yeah. Ok. Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, dear readers, we meet our first Clonephine. Thanks for reading!


	10. Complex Lines of Affinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short teaser to tide you until the next update (coming soon)! Meet another Timandra clone- Claire.

CLAIRE

Jordana is angry with me. Or I suppose I should say, Jordana is angry with me _again_. She wanted so badly for me to be Delphine’s first contact with our little group, but I couldn’t get away. The museum’s new hall of human origins opens in two weeks and the sheer volume of last minute details to be ironed out may actually be the death of me. It’s only the culmination of my professional work to date, not that Jordana would value that at all. It is times like this that I wish that I had never learned about any of this- that I didn’t find it imperative to know if there are more like me out there, and if so, who are they, what are they like, how many of us there might be. It is in my nature to want to find the order of things, to create taxonomy where there is none, file them neatly or present them with a tiny sign and an easily understood little paragraph (average reading level not above fourth grade, please). But this is beyond my ken.

I suppose I could turn the tables on her, but I don’t have it in me to be angry. I was understanding when Jordana said she couldn’t get away either. Something about it being her turn to chaperone little Avery’s class trip to the aquarium, and PTA, and Pilates and who would make dinner for Chad? Though she is supremely self-centered I do get it. We all have lives outside of this. Even Ada, who actually very graciously offered to step up and go to intercept Delphine, has a life of a sort. Though the two of us don’t exactly share her values, she has made an effort to clean up her act since Jordana and I found her in that alley a few months ago. I used to think that it was the shock of finding out about us that straightened her out, but now I’m beginning to believe that what she really needed was a family. I’m getting sappy in my old age.

I think again about Delphine. A scientist. Host/parasite relationships, apparently. I used our inter-library loan system to get her dissertation sent to me, and though the subject matter is well outside my own area of expertise, it is clear that she’s intelligent. And driven, if this fellowship with the DYAD Institute is any indication. When Nina mentioned that she was coming to the U.S. and that her school had ties with a multinational bio-medical engineering company my spidey senses were kicked into high alert. While Jordana wanted to go in guns blazing (maybe literally? one never knows in the Atlanta suburbs), I urged caution. It felt to me, and now with Ada’s latest report, still feels like a trap. I’m just unsure if Delphine is the bait or the prey.

I find myself wondering how she is feeling right now, whether she’s shocked or angry, confused maybe? Our origins are so dear to us as humans. It is the whole premise of my work- to understand and explore the roots of humanity itself. I had no idea that there would come a time that I would be forced to look at the questions that had plagued me in graduate school on such a micro level. These basic questions of who we are, how we became to be, what separates us from one another, not to mention other creatures- they’ve preyed on my mind for decades and now I am thinking about them in an entirely new light. I find myself wishing I’d spent more time studying the genetic components of evolutionary development rather than the more mundane musculoskeletal differences between sub-species. I might understand this better then.

At least my mother had told me that she and my father had sought help for a fertility problem, and that I was the result of in vitro fertilization so I knew my roots were different than most people’s. Poor Jordana didn’t even have that. As far as she ever knew she was the apple of her mama and daddy’s eye, and the proud older sister to a whole passel of upper crust, new money, southern snobs. Bless her heart. She has been rolling with all of it though, I’ll give her that. And even though she is hard on Ada, I think that she secretly wishes she were more like her. The two of them are like the flip sides of a coin. They may never like one another, but I think there’s a begrudging respect growing and maybe more than a little love.

The scientist in me is intrigued by the reality of us. We are too perfect an experiment for this to not be the result of someone’s theory made real. Four- no five now- genetically identical infants raised in different environments. As angry as I am to think that I am someone’s science project, I am simultaneously fascinated by it. We are all so different. Nina is serious and reserved, but smart, and has a very dry sense of humor that she’s only very recently been sharing. Jordana is the absolutely stereotypical southern sorority girl turned housewife. Ada is all street smarts and wiles. And me? I guess I’m the geek. 

These days I find myself looking into the mirror- staring into the same eyes I’ve seen now in four other faces. Mine are hidden behind glasses, my hair- a mess of dirty blonde curls- is usually pulled back or braided neatly to keep it out of my face and out of my work. I favor cardigan sweaters and comfortable shoes. I have had a grand total of one mani/pedi, for my college roommate's wedding when I was a bridesmaid. I haven’t been lucky in love, but then again I haven’t exactly been looking for it. I’d much rather pore over hominid fossils than spend time trying to make awkward small talk at a bar. 

I wonder if my new sister, Dr. Cormier, will be like me- studious and geeky- or more like one of the others. I know that she will likely be something else altogether, some combination of genes and environment, nature and nurture that will have produced yet another me-not-me. I also know, however, that there will be a moment- perhaps she’ll brush her hair back just so, or gnaw at her lip, or any other of a thousand small things that each of us thinks are unique to us- and in that moment we will be forced to acknowledge that for all of our uniqueness we are also the same. 

I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. We are all supposed to have a group chat on Skype later this afternoon. Maybe Nina will also have more information for us. I know she is scared that Delphine is somehow involved with all of this, or that DYAD has found out that she’s a clone and is trying to trap her, but I keep asking for what purpose? Jordana says I’m too cold and analytical. She doesn’t really care about the whys. She thinks that Chad is spying on her, swears he pulled hair out of her hairbrush the other day and stuck it in an envelope. Ada said he was probably having her drug tested. She didn’t find that idea comforting or amusing. She also thinks it is some kind of New World Order conspiracy- the Illuminati or the World Bank or something. For whatever reason she finds this ludicrous idea more palatable than science. I don’t think Ada cares why, or how, or even who. She has said before that she always thought there was something missing in her life… maybe we’re it.


	11. Types Previously Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More characters = more shifts in narrative. Enjoy!

DELPHINE

It is early when I leave, too early, the sun has barely risen over the distant buildings of St. Paul as I walk briskly through the empty streets.  It is a long walk to campus from my apartment but I do it anyway, it is like I have to.  I am jittery with so much, Ada asleep on my couch, the idea of Jordana and Claire, the thought of being tracked by people I do not know and am not sure I want to know.  The mind blowing but strangely unsurprising revelation that my nightmares have been founded in reality this whole time, that there is more to me, more of me, than meets the eye.

Before I leave I scrawl a quick note to my doppelgänger promising to return by mid-afternoon, urging this black haired, punk rock version of myself to make herself at home, to order take out with the fifty dollars that I leave her.  I also leave a key to reassure her that I am on her side, that I will not be going anywhere, at least not for now.  Once again the scientist has outrun the pragmatist and I am desperate to know what is happening, what has happened, to make the substance of my sleep into a full and total reality beyond my wildest comprehension.  

Over wine Ada showed me pictures of the others, our sisters she called them, and she shared what little information that they had gathered, this disparate triumvirate of faces that were mine and yet not.  She promised to introduce me to the others, Claire the museum curator and Jordana the homemaker, via Skype later today.  This has me wishing that I did not have to go to campus, did not have to spend the day making lists of needs and reviewing graduate student applications to be my next human punching bag.

The only pull that keeps my feet moving is the idea of running into Cosima, if only for a moment.  As I exit Bordertown with a coffee and a scone I briefly entertain the fantasy of rifling through a stack of applications, seeing her name and instantly approving it, if only to get her alone for a moment, to still those fast moving hands with my own.  I step off the curb and am nearly run down by a large pickup truck, the driver leaning out the window and yelling incomprehensibly.  Merde.  I should not be thinking about such things, especially not now, not when I have inexplicably become the protagonist of some absurdist science-fiction fantasy.  I should be halfway to Pitcairn Island by now, but I am not.  

Normally I am a skeptic but it is hard to argue with the facts before me, no plastic surgeon could produce that level of exactitude; this is science on a higher level than even I can wrap my head around and I have a feeling that there is more to all of this than even my new - friends?  sisters?  clones? - know.  There is a reason I have been coaxed here, a reason that I am being given such large gifts, and while I know my work is good, it is not independent lab before the age of 30 good.  I shudder as I think of what it could all mean and who could be at the center.   I do not know who to trust and I do not know to whom I should turn.  I only know two things - that there are genetic identicals of me out there that know I exist, and that there is something bigger than all of us standing just outside of our peripheral vision, shooting at our feet to make us dance.

I step into my still largely empty lab with a pang of sadness.  Is this even real, all of this?  Is it even worth it, knowing what little I know now, dreading how much I do not know?  I lean against a support beam and look out the massive south facing window, letting my cheek rest briefly against the cold metal, willing my brain to slow down.  It is too sterile here, too austere.  I feel nervous, like at any minute I could be interrupted by aliens, or another version of me, or Aldous Leekie.  Leekie.  DYAD.  It is all so much.

Dr. Delphine Cormier, DYAD fellow, clone?  Is that what I am?  My parents never said anything about fertility treatments, never said anything out of the ordinary, and now...now there is no way to know, at least not directly from them.  I shake my head at my own paranoia, shoulder my bag almost violently, and stalk towards the library.  I will bury myself in research until I find my way out of this torpor because I cannot face the spiral of this afternoon if I am as frantic as I feel right now.  I will study my way out of my anxiety, it almost always works.

 

COSIMA

I tried the lecture hall, the laboratory, the surprisingly-good-for-being-in-the-fucking-frozen-north taco joint outside of campus, but still no sign of Delphine.  I’m going to have to find her if I’m going to convince her to go to the DYAD event.  Briefly, I consider blowing it off, but then I think about my cute little apartment, my newly padded bank account, and I don’t want to piss Leekie off.  Not yet.  There will be other things that I am going to need from him, and I want to save his forgiveness for when I really fuck up.  I think for a moment of trying her in her lab-but don’t want her to think I’m a creepy stalker.  And after the absolute stunning success of our earlier run in, I know I will have to work a little harder so that maybe I can salvage both my job and my self-esteem.

I’ve decided to stake out the library and find a table near the QH-QR sections.  I can’t believe I’m trying to manufacture a run in with someone based on their use of the Library of Congress call numbering system, but there it is.  I am about to give up for the day when I catch sight of blonde curls and the back of a labcoat.  Feeling not unlike Alice, I wind my way through the stacks, trying to keep my distance, but willing her to slow down.  Finally I see her, on her cell phone- totally against the rules- but at least now the tables are turned.  Her voice is hushed, but emphatic.  She raises her eyes to mine, and I see surprise followed by a smile that has me frozen to the spot, and she raises her hand in a little wave that I return.

Ok. I can do this, I can just play it cool and let her come to me.  Resettling myself with my readings, I notice her stake out some space two tables over.  I try not to let myself look over, but I can feel her presence as sure as I can feel my own heart beating.  Twenty minutes go by and I look down to see that I’ve highlighted the same sentence three times over. This isn’t working.  She appears to actually be studying.  I’m going to have to take action.  

“Hey, Delphine.” I half-heartedly try to whisper, as it is a library after all.

“ _Bonjour_ Cosima.”  She remembers my name.  That has to be a good sign, right?  

“I’m bored.”

She laughs, it is a deep throaty chuckle and I want to hear her do it again. “Bored already?  This does not bode well for your semester.  Though I will admit that I am bored as well.  Minneapolis is nice, but it is… it is not Paris.”

“Or San Francisco.  I feel you.”  I shuffle my feet, lean slightly on her table. “So, in the interest of killing boredom.... I saw this flyer up in the grad student lounge and I have to admit I am intrigued.”  I hand her the flyer lamely, and watch her face as she reads the faux-futuristic script.  She is unamused, but looks up with a pasted-on smile, hiding something.

“Ah yes, Dr. Leekie and his ‘diverse thinkers.’  Are you familiar?”

“Well, us EvoDevo types are naturally skeptical, but yeah, I’ve heard of him. I saw his TED Talk online.  I hear he brings the freaks, AND it says that there’s a reception after.  As a starving grad student, it is my duty to follow up on these leads.  I was wondering if you wanted to check it out?”  I try to not look as hopeful as I feel, and likely fail.  But she is smiling, a real one this time.

“Are you asking me to go to this...neolution talk with you, Cosima?”

“I mean… it _is_ sponsored by DYAD, so the food is probably going to be a little better than the dried up chicken they usually serve.  And wine.  There will be wine.  Come on, you can heckle with me.”

“Well, I suppose I cannot say no to that, non?  Such an interesting first date you have planned.”  Date?  Did she just say date?  Holy shit.  She can’t possibly be flirting with me, can she?

“Why, Dr. Cormier!  I wouldn’t dream of being so forward with a new fellow.  I’m just a lowly transfer student trying to make a friend.” I cock my eyebrow at her, wondering if she will take the bait, wondering if I even want her to.  Her face remains open, impassive, but I can see that she knows she’s made me nervous and that this gives her a fair degree of pleasure.  “Please?"

“If that is indeed the case, then I would be delighted to attend the event with you.  I am in need of friends in this…” she pauses thoughtfully, and I cannot help but think that she knows more than we, than Leekie, thinks she knows, “brave new world.”

 

JORDANA

I can't believe Claire talked me into lettin' Ada go to Minneapolis, let alone loaning her the money to get settled there for a while.  Chad would tell me I'm impulsive, not thinking, but it makes perfect sense to me.  Besides, it's my money, thanks to daddy, not his, so he can go fly a kite.  It'll be money well spent, I think, because there's another of us- Delphine Cormier- a French doctor, and I can't just uproot my life to go figure out what her deal is. I don't have time to spare to head to the godforsaken hinterland.  I've got commitments, family... Junior League.  How I became the ringleader of all of this I'll never know.  Claire claims to be busy on some kind of caveman exhibit, and Ada did volunteer.  Maybe it'll be good for her to be away from her old stompin' grounds for a while.  Maybe this doctor will be good for her.  God knows she wasn't doing herself any favors before she met Claire and me.

I set my laptop up in the breakfast nook where the light is best and check my hair.  I just did a keratin treatment and am feeling pretty good about the sweater set I picked to meet with Avery's gymnastics coach.  It's 3 p.m.  She should be set up and ready by now.  I sent her with a brand new laptop, and if Delphine doesn't have internet she can always tether the clone phone- her third in as many months I might add.  I mix myself a quick vodka tonic and pop open my laptop to wait.

 

DELPHINE

Something does not feel right. What began as a pleasant interruption, a mildly flirtatious encounter, has quickly shifted and I find it difficult to control the muscles in my face, find it difficult to keep from screaming in rage, sorrow, and frustration.

“Please?”

Cosima asks, her smile nervous and sweet, her stance shifting as she shuffles back and forth in patterned tights.  I had been so excited to see her, so thrilled that she remembered my name, but the grinning face of Aldous Leekie on the flyer and her nervous insistence send me into a tailspin.  I discretely suck in a breath and fiddle with my hair, flash a quick smile, and nonchalantly agree to attend.  Just because she is interested in this lecture does not mean she is part of some multi-national cloning operation planning to kidnap and dissect me.   It is ridiculous to think she is involved, right?  And even if she is, maybe she can be the beginning of the answers I and my newfound sisters are so desperate for.  I cannot help but chuckle at how excited she is.  Cannot help myself as I lean forward, delighted by her voice. I try to focus on her and only her, the way she grins, her tongue between her teeth, the way she laughs and shifts with the force of her own barely contained glee.  She is a whirlwind, a force of motion, like a human Rube Goldberg machine dropping objects only to shift them immediately back into motion.

“Ok, ok...umm...so let’s meet like, at 8?  In front of Tate?  That’s where your lab is, right?”

“Actually, I have a few things to do at home beforehand, But I can meet you in front of…”

I quickly look to the flyer, willing my own impassivity to hold under the penetrating gaze of Aldous Leekie, director of the DYAD Institute and my benefactor.

“...in front of Coffman at 8.  Yes?”

She is nodding with what looks like relief and I feel my heart constrict.  I decide that I cannot stand it any longer, this confluence of pleasure and panic, and so I begin to gather my things, make excuses, and wish her well before our rendezvous in a few hours.  Without thought, I lean down and kiss each cheek softly, just grazing the corners of her lips, before I turn abruptly and explode out of the library doors, my heart in my mouth and the rush of my own pulse in my ears drowning out all other stimuli.

*****

I find Ada in front of my door, dressed in the long black knit sweater that lives on the back of my desk chair, smoking what looks like my cigarettes.  Her smile is sheepish and her features do not look as harsh by the light of day; without the purple lipstick she almost looks like she belongs in the U of M quadrangle, though the severe haircut remains an indicator of a more storied existence.

“Sorry,” she nods downward, “about this, but I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

I smile warmly and shake my head, of course I do not mind, and point to the pack of cigarettes.  She shakes one out, a direct mirror of my own frequent motions, and offers my own lighter as I lean towards her.

“ _Non_ , do not worry about it.  Please, stay as long as you like and borrow whatever you need.  I am just happy that you are still here.”

She laughs then, loudly, a deep and throaty reverberation that is like mine but not.  Will this ever get old, the drawing of parallels?

“Yeah, well, fucking hard to run from this shit, right?”

I am nodding, inhaling deeply, studying her features.  My features.  She has a nose ring and the faint outline of tattoos creeping up her neck.  Her skin is pale, almost translucent, and when I glance towards her arms she crosses them.  A junky.  Or a recovering one.  I am almost certain.  She is eyeing me too, though she makes no effort to be subtle so I drop mine and we size each other up carefully.  She feels younger, somehow, though I cannot be sure and do not ask.  She is me and yet not me.  Same dark hazel eyes, same tight curls, same tall frame and high cheek bones.  Same wounded look, though her wounds are manifested externally, a scar across her temple, the deep hollows above her collarbones.  She is what I would have become if I had continued the wild behaviors of my early secondary school years.  Her parents were not nearly as committed to her turn around as mine had been; or perhaps her force of will, her commitment to disobedience, was greater.  She crushes the remainder of her cigarette beneath her foot and interrupts the reflective silence, her slim body canting towards the door.

“Ok, so, ready to meet the others?”

“ _Oui_.  Yes.  I am as a ready as I can be I think.”

She laughs again, using the spare key to let us both in.  The blankets are neatly folded across the couch and the dishes that had ornamented my sink since last week have been cleaned and neatly stacked.  Ada sees me eye them and looks to the ground.

“Sorry, I meant to put them away but wasn’t sure…”

I cannot help myself as I wrap her into an awkward hug, shaking my head.

“ _Non, non_ , do not be sorry.  You did not have to clean up…”

She returns the hug with one arm, the other hand raised to move her hair behind her ears in a nervous gesture.  She is sweet and I am grateful to her now as we sit on my couch and she spills a flood of technology onto my table.

“Ok, so Jordana said to call as soon as you got back.  She also got you a clone phone, they’re black market or some crazy Southern mafia shit so they can’t be traced to any of us…”

“Is this how you all talk to one another then?”

She nods and draws a similar phone from her pocket, the screen cracked and held together with what looks like packing tape.

“Yeah, Jordana buys them...and I break them.”

She tosses the phone nonchalantly onto the table and I wince at the sound.  She does not seem to notice as she busies herself with logging on to a new looking macbook and opening a myriad of windows and proxy servers.  Soon I hear the familiar “boop boop” and get a twinge in my gut as I think of my mother’s familiar _allo mon petite_ from the other end.  Instead, it is a mirror, again.  Jordana’s voice is a slow, heady drawl, much deeper than mine or Ada’s, but still the same idea, a variation on our theme.  She has impeccable posture and her hair is flawlessly straight in that effortless looking way that I know probably took her a few hours to pull off.  She is wearing a sweater set and pearls and all I can think of is _Gone with the Wind_ as she draws out my name, a high-ball glass balanced between delicately poised, heavily jeweled fingers.

“Delphiiiine!  It is just a pleasure to meet you, finally.  We have been waiting ages to...connect with you.”

I smile as Ada pushes against me on the couch, her face twisted in a silly grin, a contrast to the version of her I met just last night.

“See bitch?!  I totally didn’t fuck it up.  Score one for the A squad!”

Jordana rolls her eyes, refusing to address our black clad other, her mouth twitching at the corner.

“How're you feelin’ Delphine?  I know this has to be a shock to you…”

“Oh, _bien_ , I mean...yes, it is a shock, but…”

I trail off and shake my head, not sure of what to say, still wrapping my head around this third me so tightly wound and perfectly positioned.  She takes a deep pull from her glass then sets it down, the clink of a coaster echoing through what appears to be a grand dining room in the background.

“Well, yes, it’s a lot.  I would love to introduce you to Claire, but she’s, as always, about as punctual as the slow boat to China.  I’m not as good at explaining the...science of it all, I’m just the financier of this rigamarole.”

“Not that we know that much, I mean, fuck…” Ada chimes in, leaning back on my couch with her feet up on the coffee table just to the right of the computer.  I am about to say something, about to try to make small talk, when Jordana turns abruptly and shouts something into the cavernous house.  She turns back with a strained smile as a figure approaches from behind her.  Ada waves furiously into the camera and it is clear that she and Claire have a far warmer relationship as this new version fills the screen, causing Jordana to shift backwards with a tight, barely veiled scowl.

“Hi Ada-cakes!  I see you found our girl!  Bonjour Delphine!”

Claire’s voice is warm and pleasant, like a tour guide’s without the volume, the voice of someone who can speak with authority while instilling immediate trust.   I feel my whole body relax as the nervous energy from Jordana is replaced by the easy grace of this other.  Her hair is thrown up haphazardly and her face is bare save for a few streaks of what might be dirt.  She is dressed far more casually than any of us (save for maybe Ada), and her eyes are framed by red plastic glasses.

“So, here we are!  What do you think?  Actually, don’t answer that, I’m not sure I’m ready for it just yet.”

“I will admit that I am not really sure what I am thinking…”

“Yeah?  Imagine MY surprise when some random Russian woman contacts me out of the blue claiming to be my clone!  It’s a lot, like, a lot a lot.  So, tell us about you, what’s going on at U of M, where have you been for the last twenty years, stuff like that.”

I settle easily into conversation with Claire, alternately delighted and confused by the interjections of the other two.  Everything is easy, almost too easy, until I mention the DYAD event that I will soon have to get ready for.  Jordana shoots Claire a nervous look who then breathes a deep sigh.

“Ada, did you explain the whole watcher thing yet?”

Ada shakes her head.  I furrow my brow in confusion as Claire launches into an explanation about experiments and spies and followers.  

“Chad is absolutely my monitor, no question,” Jordana interrupts, raising her glass only to grimace with disappointment as the contents seem to have magically disappeared.  I lean forward, my balled fists kneading into my own thighs.

“Do the monitors know what we are?”

Claire shakes her head.

“No.  I think it is a double blind, you know?  So the results aren’t skewed.  I think I’ve had a few over the last few years, but I really can’t be sure, I don’t have a lot of friends, to be honest with you.  I really wish I had more information for you Delphine…”

A flash of a memory; Esme, the tweezers.  I close my eyes tight and shake my head, willing my tears to not fall.

“I just arrived here from Iceland, I did not bring anyone with me, but there is someone who wants to be...friends…”

Jordana’s arms wheel wildly in the background as she pushes Claire aside.  Claire scowls and bumps Jordana back as they whisper harshly at each other, far too quickly for me to keep up.  Ada shakes her head and mumbles something about them being silly bitches.  Jordana seems to win out because her face fills the screen as she speaks in a wild rush.

“Jesus Christ on a crutch, stay away from him, whoever he is!”

Before I can think I find myself speaking in a wild tumble, Ada’s reassuring arm snakes around me and her head falls onto my shoulder as they all pause and listen.

“I must, I must have been monitored this whole time.  I had a lover in Paris, we lived together, we thought about marriage, and then I found her in our bedroom collecting my hair and I lost it.  I tore my whole life up and left her and Paris and my parents and everything I had ever loved…”

My voice begins to shake and I close my eyes again.

“I have these dreams, these terrible dreams, and I do not sleep and all I do is work and now...now there may be someone else following me?! _Je ne sais pas si je peux gerer cela!_ ”

I am crying but I cannot stop.  When I open my eyes there are three sets of the same shape and hue staring back, I do not know long I went on, but I do know that most of it was not in English.  I sigh and try to apologize but Jordana waves me off, her glass full again.

“Honey, you do NOT have to apologize to us.  We understand, right?”

Claire and Ada both nod and we sit in tense silence for a moment before Claire leans forward, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

“Ok, so tell us more about this event.  And about…”

She pauses, waiting for me to fill in the details.

“Cosima.  Her name is Cosima.”

Jordana raises a brow, connecting the dots.

“Oh, so you’re gay then!?”

Ada snorts with laughter and buries her face into my shoulder as if this is the greatest thing that has been said all day.  I cannot help but chuckle as I answer.  
  
“ _Oui_ , though I guess now my sexuality is not the most interesting thing about me...”

Claire is laughing too as Jordana sighs and drains the second glass, muttering incomprehensibly.  I glance at my clock, it is 16:00.  I have to start getting ready soon, though for what I cannot be sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting thus far - keep it up - we love the feedback! While we initially came up with the Timandra clones with the Leda clones in mind (Cosima/Claire; Jordana/Alison; Nina/Katja/Beth), we are not necessarily going to mirror their story lines in total since we plan on bringing in other Leda clones and making this tangled mess all sorts of awesome. Hope you all continue to enjoy the ride!


	12. Sympathies Tender and Diffuse

COSIMA

I’m surprised by the number of people who seem to be filing in to hear Dr. Leekie’s talk. I mean, I know that he’s got a sort of a… cult following, but I didn’t think that he would bring so many of my fellow students out. Maybe it’s the free food. Here and there I notice his silver haired freaks milling around. I have known him so long that I forget that he’s kind of a rockstar in evolutionary biology, genetics, even philosophy. Today, after Delphine agreed to meet with me I called him in a panic, but his phone sent me straight to voicemail. He never called me back, and I’m beginning to think that he overestimated my ability to remain at all chill about this. I have no choice but to hope that he got my message and that he will pretend like he’s never met me in front of Delphine. Surely he is better at all of this than I am. Better at lying. Ugh. I already hate myself for lying to her. There’s something about her that reminds me of a caged animal. She startles easily, her eyes seem to always be darting around looking for an escape, but when she looks at me, when she takes a moment and focuses on me, it is all I can do to remember to breathe.

Suddenly there’s a tap on my shoulder, and there she is. She smells of cigarettes and what is probably a ridiculously expensive French perfume, because American girls do not smell like this. “Delphine! Hey!” I try not to jump away as she presses cold kisses to my cheeks.

“Cosima. Hi!” She smiles, but is distracted by a pair of silver-haired, weird contact-lens wearing club kids. I’m suddenly afraid she’s gonna bail.

“I am so glad you came. You won’t be disappointed.” I watch her take stock of the students around her and I can’t help but wonder what danger she is trying to seek out. Quickly, she seems to decide they’re harmless and then her focus is back on me, full force.

“Mmmhmmm. I can tell. Come!”

I let her pull me close to her and can feel the warmth of her body through my red wool coat. I always start out feeling like I have the upper hand in our interactions but within moments she seems to have me rocked back on my heels. Before I can consider that thought, she tucks my arm into the crook of her elbow, and suddenly I’m the one being led into the lecture hall. I shouldn’t be surprised that once again I appear to be tardy, but we barely get seated before the lights go down and suddenly there is Aldous, looking handsome but severe in all black. I am relieved at the slight nod he sends in my direction before he begins. He pauses, and I recall that he has always had a flair for the dramatic.

“Neolution! A philosophy of today for tomorrow. Rooted in our past in the evolution of the human organism. But before we go to the future, let me take you back, three thousand years to the great Greek philosopher Plato, in his twilight years.” He stoops over and affects the voice of an elderly man, “Poor old Plato was going blind, going lame, and losing his hearing.” The audience laughs as one, and I catch Delphine’s eye as she too chuckles at the renowned scientist’s antics.

He stands and becomes the teacher again, begins pacing the room that is now engaged with him, waiting for him to take them along. “Now, imagine he knew we could correct his sight, restore his hearing, and replace his ailing body parts with titanium ones. Plato would have thought we were gods.” He pauses, catches my eye. “But we’re not. We’re just fundamentally flawed human beings.” 

Suddenly he is walking toward me, and I squirm in my seat. “Your glasses, for example, make you somewhat… um.. Platonic.” I don’t think I’m imagining the sly smile Delphine sends my way, Platonic indeed. I meet her glance and return the grin before Aldous continues, “But within the very near future, I’ll be able to offer you the ability to see into a spectrum never before seen by the naked eye. Infrared. X-rays, ultraviolet. You interested?”

I can’t help but to revert to the cheeky teenager that I know he knows me to be. “Maybe I’ll just start with basic LASIK?” He laughs, as do my fellow students and I’m relieved when he walks away.

“And so you should. That’s making an evolutionary choice. Neolution gives us the opportunity at self-directed evolution. I believe that’s not only a choice, but a human right.”

I hope he doesn’t see my eyeroll. We’ve had this conversation before, and he knows where I stand. He carries on, gives the lecture I’ve heard in many different iterations over the years. It sounds good, too good to be true really, but maybe that’s what people want. They want to believe that we have the technology to fix those parts of themselves that they find abhorrent, or to create new parts that will make them something more than they are now. He wraps up, and I see that he’s caught Delphine’s interest as well.

I beat the rush to the catering tables and grab a couple of glasses of wine, one each, red and white, and offer them both to her. She chooses red, as I thought she would. “Well? What did you think?”

“Hmm…” She is watching the Freaky Leekies again. They’re huddled around Aldous, having him sign their books. One girl holds out her arm and a Sharpie, and I’m sure his name will be permanently inked there by the end of tomorrow.

He catches my eye discreetly and I know he wants me to bring her to him. “Look, there he is. I think we should go tell him he’s full of shit.”

“What? No! He’s the director of DYAD and I am its fellow. I suppose I should be the one to go say hello.” She looks like she’d rather gnaw her own fingers off, so I make it easy for her by sauntering up to him, pretending to meet him for the first time. “Hi! Dr. Leekie, Cosima Niehaus. Your talk was very interesting. I’ve read your book, of course, but I have to say, some of what you talk about seems a little ethically questionable.” I watch as the vein in his head throbs at that. It’s always been his easiest mark, the ethics. I let him respond, as he always does, with platitudes about agency and human freedom as I motion for Delphine to join us.

She comes over and I’m surprised to hear him greet her with some familiarity. “ _Bonjour Dr. Cormier, comment cava?_ I’m so pleased to see you here this evening.”

_“Bien, merci_ , Dr. Leekie. When Cosima invited me I was not sure what to expect, but, now, mmm… je suis interesse. Being allowed to shape one’s own destiny in the ways you described would be a huge leap forward for society. Tell me, do you think that such a future is actually possible, or do you think that it is just what the people want to hear?”

 

I’m a little surprised at the slight jab, but his ego is more than big enough to handle the blow. “Oh, I will admit that the talk of some of the more…. cosmetic… improvements sell books, but I do think that we will see a time when parents are able to turn off certain genes, that we will be able to cure certain genetic illnesses through gene therapies. So, if the cost to research and improve such advances is to also allow people to change the texture of their hair or the height of their unborn children… well, then that’s the cost.”

He pauses here, shooting me a brief but pointed look. I cannot tell if he is pleased with my performance or not, nor do I really care. I’m sure he’ll let me know all about how he feels as soon as he feels like it. 

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am obligated to go sign books for the next hour. But I would love to talk to you more. The institute was very excited when you agreed to be our fellow. Perhaps we will be able to touch base before I have to leave town next week. I’d be very interested to hear more about your research, perhaps dinner some night..." He bites off a quick " _adieu_ " and is quickly surrounded by his newest acolytes. I watch Delphine’s gaze turn sharp against his back. Did she suspect something already?

Suddenly I can't be in the lecture hall anymore. I can tell she wants to escape too, so I cut over to one of the tables laden with food and bottles of wine and swipe two bottles before grabbing Delphine’s arm and fleeing the scene. She has the good grace to gasp and look shocked before she grabs one of the bottles out of my hand. “I… you did not!” 

“OH, but I did! C’mon, let’s get out of here!” Before I know it she is grasping my hand in hers and we are running from the building, laughing into the cool fall night, away from Dr. Leekie and Neolution and the tightening web of our seriously fucked up lives. The absurdity of the situation suddenly hits me and I am laughing. Once I start, she joins me, and I tuck our joined hands into my pocket as we make our way through the quad. I pull her down to a bench, where we both sit, panting.

I sit back and examine our haul. Screw tops. Thank god. I begin to peel the foil off of my bottle, though I am loathe to drop the warm hand that is still entwined with my own. She sits back and starts to dig through her pockets.

She's still breathing heavily when she announces,“You know what is a very French thing to do?”

I look up from the peeling foil to catch the twinkle in her eye. “What’s that?”

“After a jogging like this, we like to have a nice little cigarette.” she says as she brandishes a slim green box.

“Uh, did you say ‘a jogging’?” I can't help the laughter that colors my words, but she seems so happy and when she laughs with me, I don’t know if she knows I am picking on her.

“ _Oui_.”

“You did. Ok. Just checking.”

She shakes the box in my direction after having plucked a slim cigarette for herself. “You want one? You smoke?”

I decline, “Uh, no, just pot for me.”

“Ooooh, really?”

“Oh yes, I’m from San Fran, sooo….” I lose my train of thought as I watch her light her cigarette. I could watch her mouth for days. I shake my head slightly and am grateful when my cold fingers finally manage to get the top off of the bottle of wine. I take a deep swig as I watch her take her first drag. God. That mouth. Before I even know what I’m saying I blurt, “I am gonna get you soooo baked one day.”

She allows a tendril of smoke to escape as she nods, examining me closely, before exhaling a stream of smoke. "Mmm, ok. One day."

I notice now that she is once again totally focused on me, the restless energy she sometimes exudes appears to have been burned off by our "jogging." I take another pull from the bottle and hand it to her. Without hesitation she brings the bottle to her lips and drinks. She passes it back and before long it is empty. I crack the other bottle, and pass it to her without speaking.

There’s something settling between us as we sit here in the shadows talking quietly about the nature of human agency, free will, and biology and she’s leaning into me as she quotes Hume, Hobbes, and Kant, passing the bottle back and forth. I counter with Descartes and Hegel, and her eyes come alight. For an immunologist she has a solid grounding in philosophy, and my heartbeat quickens when she reaches out to touch my knee to make a point, or when she looks skyward to seemingly pluck words from the stars. We aren’t arguing, but we don’t exactly agree, so the conversation between us is heated and lively while the wine is making our voices soft and gestures expansive.

We’re both strangers here, though certainly she more than me, and I hope that she means what she said earlier about needing a friend. I’d like to be that for her, in spite of the monitoring, maybe because of the monitoring. If she keeps looking at me with those doe-eyes I might like to be more than a friend as well. I feel awkward around her- like I haven’t since I was a teenager, and I’m not sure whether it is because she is beautiful or because of her sharp intelligence. I want to be more for her. More of what I’m not sure, but I am sure that the me that I am is not enough, not for her. She lights another cigarette and leans back and I can tell she's trying to decide what she thinks of me. I try not to squirm under her gaze, but cannot be still either, and I find myself twirling my rings and looking up through my eyelashes to meet her gaze.


	13. Secret and Wonderful Harmony

DELPHINE

In a flash I go from poking fun at Dr. Leekie, my new - boss? benefactor? monitor? No, he cannot be my monitor, I cannot be that important - to bolting out the door with contraband, Cosima’s hand in mine, her laughter echoing over, under, and through the dark arches of campus as we flee the scene of our crime. She is running quickly and I have difficulty keeping up, probably from the years of smoking, and I am grateful when she abruptly stops, panting as heavily as I am. I light a cigarette and fall into easy banter with her, half smiling as she teases my linguistic choices, laughing as she expounds on the universe, and rolling my eyes when she loops Cartesian geometry into our increasingly heated conversation, our bodies drawn tightly together on a bench outside of Diehl Hall.

I am cold but I do not mind, having grown used to the constant bone chill of Rekjayvik, and I lean into her words as they grow quieter under the weight of alcohol, the weight of the second bottle as she opens it with deft hands and passes it to me. Our fingers brush and I swear she is blushing, though it is hard to say because it is dark and because she looks away. I do not look away, I am never one to look away, though I do bite my lower lip, a weak attempt at containing my nervous energy. I examine her carefully, unsure of what to think of this study in contrasts, unsure of where to place her in this evolving story of madness and impossibility. Twenty-four hours is not much time to adjust and I find my head clanging about with increasingly distressing scenarios. 

She clearly knows Dr. Leekie, it was obvious, the way she drove headlong into the conversation, arm awkwardly extended, the absurdity of “meeting” this man she already knows written all over her adorably open face. But what does that mean? Does it even matter? Maybe she took a class with him once, or maybe she is just a fan. Claire herself said it, that we have no idea who our makers are, no idea about the beginnings of our creation, and if we can get closer to something that could hold the answers, or lead us to the answers...then...

But then there was Jordana’s point. About being monitored, about being constantly under surveillance, the injustice and indignity of it. A relationship built on secrecy and distrust, her growing disdain for her husband so blatant and violent. I look up at the stars through the thinning foliage and sigh, quote Hobbes, then turn my eyes back to Cosima’s openly affectionate gaze and I know with certainty that she is my monitor. She has to be. Her immediate and obvious interest has to come from somewhere other than this fool’s attraction, this unstoppable force on the winding path towards the immovable object. She says something that I do not quite catch but I laugh anyway, bump my shoulder against hers. I should know better, should be more cautious, but the wend and whirl of the last day, the breaking of the rules of dreams, the reality of my new situation, has me feeling reckless and giddy. If she is my monitor then that is all the more reason to keep her close, to learn from her as best as I can, to play at whatever game she is playing at.

Also, I cannot help myself as I watch her, cannot help the ache in my heart as her quick hands draw shapes into the black night sky, cannot help but stare as she licks her lips after making a particularly controversial point, the bottom one stained with wine. _Dieu. Non._ And yet…

“So, like, I think that…”

I am nodding but not listening, leaning but not sure. I have spent years chasing the illusion of certainty. I have spent years chasing myself, and now I have found them, my other selves, and I am desperately adrift and starving for something that I cannot place. 

“And there are always the ethical quandaries…”

I nod again, her voice is thick and I can tell that she is as drunk as I am, I wonder if she skipped lunch as well, I wonder what the middle of her day looked like, because I know it certainly could not have looked like mine. What does her monitoring entail? What is she looking for? And why, despite the explosion with Esme who was more than likely my monitor as well, do I find myself wanting to draw this quirky American closer rather than push her away? What does she need to learn about me? Who does she need to tell? And, more importantly, why do I suddenly need her near me?

“Sometimes I think…”

I cant my head to the side, leaning heavily against the bench as her speech comes to an abrupt halt. I realize that I have been staring, eyes wide and drinking in every inch of her like a huntress. I half-smile at the way she nervously looks away, the way she fiddles with the clashing metal rings and bracelets that mark her arrivals and leavings.

“What is it, _mon ami_ , what is it that you sometimes think?”

Her voice is a whisper as she looks up through her dark rimmed glasses, her perfect eyelashes. I do not register what she says. I am no stranger to the laws of attraction and I am certainly no stranger to the art of seduction, but the openness of her face, a mix of arousal, delight, and all-out fear, catches my breath in my throat and I find it impossible to make words for her. She wants to tell me something, needs to tell me something, and the war on her face lets me know that now is not the time and, if I want to, I can rescue her, I can be her flotation device. I lean closer, my forehead touching hers, I can smell the wine on her, the mix of soap and something earthy, something entirely hers. I close my eyes and whisper, feel the air shift with the tremble of her lips so close to mine.

“I...I have to go…”

She nods against me and I know she knows that I know, though I do not think either of us is entirely whole in our knowledge. I do not think either of us knows the total velocity of this fast moving train, these faces, these words. Before she can respond I press my lips to hers and they are soft and warm and trembling. She parts her lips with the faintest moan and I am drowning, falling into her, but I stop as my fingers twitch against her arms and I pull away, breathing perhaps heavier than when we jogged across campus almost an hour ago. She does not open her eyes, her body is shaking.

“Delphine...I...oh my god...have I made a huge mistake?”

I shake my head and laugh softly, touching her cheek before I rise.

“It...it is ok...goodbye...”

She opens her eyes as I shove my hands into my pockets and huddle into my jacket, my stride long and certain as I make my through lower campus, towards the main gates. I do not turn around because I know she will not follow me. It is as if we already have a secret language, and in that language I have given her all that she needs to move forward.

_I will find you. Do not break me._

I hail a cab, a miracle at this hour, and make my way towards home, to Ada and my sisters, to the unfolding of my day and the analysis of my actions. The analysis of her actions. The analysis of our new world order.

*****

My own scream wakes me and I am thankful that Ada is not here, will probably not be back for a day or two, as her note indicated. I am drenched in sweat despite the sharp chill in the air and as I rise from bed I groan loudly at the soreness in my limbs, the tightness in my muscles. The dreams are getting worse, more frequent, and with new players. This time she was there. Cosima was there, but instead of being just her there were multiple hers and they rushed at me all at once, so many sets of brown eyes glaring. _Foutre_. It is too much, it is all too much. I blink the remnants of tears from my eyes and notice that my phone is blinking with new messages, the last having come in only a few minutes ago. 

**Hey. I can’t sleep.**

**I feel so badly about how this all happened.**

**Are you an insomniac too?**

**I get the sense that you are…**

I grin and dial the number, one of three on this phone, and am delighted when Claire answers. It amazes me how easy it is to fall into a rhythm with this person, my sister. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for for your kind words on this little story. We hope this helps the hiatus go a bit faster for everyone, and you enjoy the little universe we're building. Feedback turns us into giant nerds who exasperate our wives. Actual quote combined with eyeroll, "Really? You have to answer fanmail right now instead of making me coffee?" Yes wife, yes I do.


	14. Beyond the Domain of Science

CLAIRE

It is four a.m. and I find myself reaching out to Delphine, somehow knowing that she too is awake. I know that when Nina contacted me initially I thought she was a crank. That is, until she sent a photo. Even then, I was sure that there was a mistake, that we were twins lost at birth or some other administrative accident. Cloning was just so fringe as to be unbelievable. But when she sent the pictures of Jordana and Ada I had no choice but to believe her, and I was also more than a little freaked out about the fact that she was able to find all of us with her Interpol connections and some huge facial recognition database. This whole thing has me thinking that conspiracy theorists might actually be on more sound footing than we give them credit for. To say that this experience has ratcheted my anxiety up a few levels is... well, it's putting it very, very lightly. 

Suddenly my phone is ringing, and it is her.

"Hello?"

"Hi. Good...morning? I got your texts and could not sleep, just as you said."

I can’t get over her voice, so like my own, but softer and with a lilt that I will never have. "I'm sorry. I know this is a lot, and I wish that I could be there, that we could all be there to help you make sense of all of this. Honestly, we haven't made much sense of it either, but I remember when I found out... I suppose it was only a few weeks ago, but still. I couldn't sleep."

"And now? It is four o'clock in the morning, Claire. You still are not sleeping."

I can't help but be touched by the concern in her voice. "I know. I was worried about you, about this meeting with your new friend. Cosima."

I wait for her reply, and the silence is speaking for her. Finally she sighs deeply.

"If you are right, and there is some sort of research program where each of us is monitored, then she has to be mine. I cannot imagine it is any of my students, and no one else has tried to get to know me beyond completely normal faculty interactions. Cosima... she seems to want to know me as a person, not as a scientist."

"Do you think she knows about you? That you're a clone?"

"I cannot say, but the way she looks at me... I am having a hard time finding the words. She just sees more than I want to show her sometimes, I think."

Her voice sounds so small, I want nothing more than to fly to her, to wrap her up in one of my old natty crocheted afghans and feed her. It's the midwesterner in me, I can’t help it. But I am here and she is there, so instead I make soothing sounds and try to explain.

"Nina says she believes that we are part of an experiment. That it is double-blind. If so, maybe Cosima doesn't even know why she is supposed to watch you, or for whom. That’s where I keep getting stuck. Who has the power to pull this off? Who made us? And why?"

I imagine her taking a long slow drag on a cigarette before she replies, "Hmm. Yes. I suppose the who matters very little to me. We have had the technology to clone organisms for thirty years. There have always been private companies and government agencies whose work has been funded to levels that would make research institutions salivate, so it is possible that the technology has been around even longer than published research would suggest. I believe the “who” must be either a government or private entity who wanted to conduct clandestine research. But why? What use are we to them?"

I have had much longer to consider these questions then my sister has, but I am suddenly nervous. My PhD in paleoanthropology hasn’t prepared me for this level of discourse, and I am worried that she will find my explanations too simplistic. Then I think of her face as it collapsed against the reality of all of this, the way Ada described her crumbling into her arms... "I... I don't know why Delphine, but surely as a scientist, you can imagine the richness of the data that could be collected in such an experiment. If ethics were not an issue? Maybe they're studying the age-old nature/nurture debate- god knows we're better than any twin study. Maybe we've been exposed to a pathogen or something. I don't know the why either, but I can see how exciting it would be from a research standpoint."

I can almost see her running her hand back through her curls, pushing the hair out of her face, and if I am not mistaken, that was the strike of a match for another cigarette. I find myself not wanting to talk about the plural us anymore, but the singular her. “It doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Now that we know about one another? I…” I trail off, but the early hour has me feeling confessional, “I’m just glad to have found you, to know that you exist, for whatever purpose. My life has always been rather solitary. I’m an only child, my parents were pretty old to be procreating… well, I guess they didn’t really procreate at all, did they? But they were… are... very simple people. My dad’s a farmer, my mom teaches kindergarten. I always wanted siblings. They provided so well for me, but could never give me that.”

“And now you have us. Such a strange sisterhood we have here, yet I do feel a connection, maybe I always have. The dreams… I do not really know when they started, but you have been with me for a long while, even though I have just met you. As shocking as this all is, I was beginning to worry about my own sanity. At least now I know that you are real, and I feel comforted as well. I am glad to have you, whatever the reason.”

I am curled into the corner of my loveseat, Darwin, my sweet little rescue mutt curled around my feet, and I am overcome with gratitude for this new sister, my rapidly growing family, the receding loneliness of my existence. All of it does not seem so overwhelming when we talk together, so impossible to understand. I wish we didn’t need to worry about the whys and hows of our existence but instead could just enjoy this new sorority of clones. I hear her take another deep drag and can almost feel the whirl of her mind. I have to ask. “What do you think you will do about her?”

“Cosima?”

“Mmm, yes.”

“I… I do not know. She knows Dr. Leekie, I am sure of that. And if it was he or DYAD who chose her to be my monitor, it was a terrible choice because she is an awful liar. She is all frenetic motion, but when she talks to him she freezes. I… we… we are very much alike she and I, and I think we are each frightened of the other. We talked tonight for hours, and I almost forgot that I should be wary. She has a way of drawing me in with her eyes and her hands, and her strange Californian idioms.”

“Well, I know Jordana would disagree, but maybe you don’t need to do anything at all. Maybe you just let this spin out for a while and see where it leads.”

“Mmmm… perhaps. I am not sure if that is wise, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that her interest in me is genuine. What scientist could possibly care about my thoughts on Heidegger versus Nietzsche? Who would care except for someone who wanted to know me more deeply, to be my friend? She asked me nothing personal, collected no samples, but she listened so well and so carefully… and she does this thing with her tongue, when she wants to smile but tries to hold it in...”

My eyes are growing heavy, and her voice is so soft and melodious that I feel my oft-frantic brain calm. She sounds happy- that’s what it is- and now I can relax. “Oh, honey, she sounds lovely, and like maybe more than a friend.”

Her laugh is sweet as well. “Yes, that may be true. I think perhaps I will do as you say. ‘let it spin out’ and see what happens. I cannot believe she could be dangerous. It is not possible.”

————————————————————————

  
COSIMA

I wake up wine drunk and confused. It’s 4 a.m. and if there was a benevolent god in the universe, I’d be able to roll over and go back to sleep. Fuck me and my persistent atheism. I take a chance and lean over the side of the bed to grab the sleek little Macbook that Leekie sent me and find myself and my duvet on the floor faster than you can say DYAD. I’m the epitome of grace and charm. Certainly now that I’m on the floor, I can fall no further, so I flip open the lid of the machine and prepare my first report on Delphine.

The white of the page is too bright, the cursor is blinking too fast, and I’m not sure what to say. Subject expresses anxiety in crowded spaces, subject thinks Aldous Leekie is a creepy motherfucker, subject smokes fancy French cigarettes and can blow perfect smoke rings. Subject’s eyes are green-grey-hazel-yellow. Subject kissed me. Or did I kiss my subject?

My head is fuzzy, but I remember it perfectly. It felt inevitable, and perhaps it was. We could blame the wine, it is convenient after all, and it wouldn’t be the first time I placed blame for questionable decisions on the beverage. And yet, I didn’t get the sense that she was a straight girl experimenting. There was hesitation, yes, but it isn’t that I’m a girl, it’s who I am, what I am maybe. There was a depth of feeling, a depth of understanding in her eyes that I’m still not quite sure what to make of. How could she know? I know I’m a terrible liar, but… but what? Does it fucking matter? What do I think is going to happen here, really, given everything she is, everything I am? What do I want to happen?

I close the report- empty- and flip over to my email. I have a note from dad along with a link to a baby goat video. He hopes I’m doing well, that the video will make me smile. It does. An email from Shay. I pop it open and notice line after line with no paragraph breaks. Nope. I hit archive. Maybe later, maybe never, I don’t know. But not now, not after this night. And the last one. From an Alison Hendrix. I flip through my mental rolodex and don’t come up with a face to fit that name, though I’ve met so many people these last weeks, I think I’ve given all of them my school email address, not my personal. I double click and open it wondering why it didn’t hit my spam filter. Maybe she’s just a student who wants to talk epigenetics. When I finished my thesis I put it online and have gotten some interesting questions from other students who are doing related research. Maybe this Alison person is Evo-Devo too.

I open it and begin to scan it, and two lines into reading my blood runs cold. No. This can’t be. She says she knows what I am. That she’s one too, and there’s more of us, and they’re dying. We’re dying. She explains the clone thing in simple terms, overly simple really, and I wonder what she knows, where she got her information. Maybe she is being circumspect. She lives in Toronto but wants to Skype or Facetime or meet, but she and the others- the others!- want me to know that I’m in danger. Oh fuck. If Leekie finds out we are all in a world of shit. This would ruin the experiment. Then again, it is already ruined if they’re self-aware, right? Isn’t that what he was warning about Delphine? I really need to start paying better attention when he is talking.

I read the email again, and what strikes me is that this Alison person is scared. That’s the undercurrent beneath all of this. She is scared, and she wants to warn me to keep me safe. I sit there for a long time, not sure how to reply, what to say, when it occurs to me that she doesn’t say anything specifically about the respiratory disease, just that we’re in danger. Dying. Now I’m scared too.

 

————————————————————————

  
NINA  


She stands over me, watching as I bleed out onto the concrete. This is not at all what I expected when I imagined my own demise. I thought there would be more fanfare- noise and sound and at the very least me fighting back. Instead I got a silent and cold blade through my ribcage while I returned from a run. I didn’t even hear her approach. I know better than this, I’ve counseled women to vary their routines, to be aware of their surroundings, but never took my own advice. I wonder if she delighted in how easy it was to hunt me: She leaves for her run at 5:00 a.m. She returns to her home at 5:50 a.m. and enters her home from the back door. And so, this is how I will die, a stab wound to the upper left quadrant, key still in my hand. I think maybe she’s hit my liver, and if so this won’t take long. I am not sure whether it is the rising sun, or if there really is a light that is growing around us.

I do not recognize her, and I don’t think I’ve ever arrested her, but maybe this is revenge for her boyfriend or perhaps it is just one of those things- wrong place/wrong time. I am able to gasp out “Why?” because surely I deserve to know at least this before I go. She leans down, her blonde hair a halo in front of the light of my porch. Her dry, chapped lips brush against my cheek and she whispers in my ear, her Russian perfect, “You are an abomination. I am sorry.” Strangely, I believe she actually is sorry. My last thoughts are of my sisters, so recently found, and I pray that they are not being hunted as well.

————————————————————————

  
DELPHINE

The world is a blur of light and sound and flesh. I close my eyes as small hands slide down my spine, blunt nails biting into my skin occasionally, strategically. I feel my lips part on their own volition as words in an unfamiliar tongue and voice let loose into the steadily thickening atmosphere, the staccato breathing of the other the only punctuation to sentences ill-formed and misunderstood by both parties. This is not about being understood. This is about being heard above all other sounds, about being seen before all other sights, these are actions not meant to be translated or interpreted, these are actions to experience. I feel my thighs begin to shake and I moan as I reach the edge, only to open my eyes to a swiftly shifting scene. Fully clothed, I am at the bus stop, my bus stop but not exactly, the shifting pink and yellow sky above an indication of things beyond my comprehension, things beyond my control. I shake my head and close my eyes and there again are those strong hands, those dark, dark eyes, those whispered words.

_Delphine…nous sommes un…_

Testing what I already know to be true, I open my eyes again and again there is the bus station that is not my bus station, again the technicolor sky. I take stock nervously and smooth my hands over my blouse before stepping into the empty street; my eyes on the approaching figure I already know will be there. The same figure as my close-eyed world, yet another torturous layer.

_Bonsoir, ma cherie…_

Her smile tight and mischievous, Cosima steps forward and drapes her arms around my neck, taking a moment to pull my earlobe between her teeth deliberately, slowly. I wrap my arms around her waist and my mind around the voice that is hers but not hers, speaking the language that is only mine as far as I know.

_Ferme tes yeux…_

I do as I am told and am hit with an immediate wave of pleasure. Her mouth is on me and I feel my body pulling apart at the joints, the very core of my being falling to shreds as I come undone and collapse into tears. I already know what will happen when I open my eyes and I dread it. I dread the realization of the dream. I dread the reality of waking. Instead, I keep my eyes closed a moment longer, lingering in my own semi-awareness, Cosima’s voice in my head, her lips are on my neck and my hands course over her sweetly rolling form until I am sobbing, loudly.

_Nous sommes un...nous sommes un…Delphine…je t’aime…Delphine…_

“Delphine, Jesus fuck!”

I wake with a gasp and sit up; Ada’s hand is tight on my bicep, her face just inches from mine. I shake my head, shake off the dreams that continue to plague me after so many days, so many hours apart from her, and smile apologetically as my sister lets go and allows her face to relax.

“I am so sorry Ada…I am afraid that I am not such a good roommate to you…”

Ada laughs and sits on the edge of my bed, her arm thrown haphazardly across my shoulders.

“Stop apologizing, it’s no big deal, seriously. I just worry. I mean, you probably get like next to zero sleep and then you run yourself ragged over at the nut hut…”

She nods in the general direction of campus and I have to laugh. It is true that I have been moving at a pace far beyond my usual activity. Anything to stay busy, anything to keep my mind off of what my life has become. I should be following Claire’s advice, I should just relax, just let it spin out as she likes to say, but I cannot. I cannot look into those eyes and still hold my tongue, I cannot even see the approximation of her silhouette in the halls without growing weak in my resolve to hide my knowledge, my savage self awareness. Ada interrupts my reverie, her firm grip guiding me back to my pillow. She curls around me and holds me close as has become her custom. Her voice low, she speaks of Cosima without saying her name, her name is a forbidden thing, her name is my very best thing.

“I think you need to talk to her…”

I nod, feeling the familiar sting of tears.

“I mean, seriously D. You don’t have to say anything about us or anything, but I think you need to talk to her for like, your own sanity or some shit.”

“Yes, I know. You are right. I am just…what about what Jordana and Claire said? She has to be my monitor, non?”

She shrugs and pulls a second blanket over us with a yawn, her bare forearms riddled with scars. My sister. My kind, sweet, broken sister.

“So what if she is? There’s obviously something there…so…”

I nod. I cannot deny it. I cannot deny any of this. And least of all, I cannot deny myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for hanging in there with us during our October break. We will plug along through the long winter and see where all these Delphines take us. I am stupidly grateful to this show for giving me a goofy human who said, "Hey, we should collaborate!" and quickly turned from Internet stalker into family.


	15. The Chaos of Observed Facts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cosima meets her sisters.

ALISON

“I emailed her. I told her that she might be in danger. Now we just have to wait, Beth.”

I hate this. I hate everything about it. A few weeks ago I was PTA president, book club leader, and had gotten over ten thousand pins on Pinterest for my instructions for an easy and festive Fall centerpiece using Mason Jars, twinkle lights and leaves harvested from your own backyard. And then this detective found me to tell me that I'm a clone. I can't even bring myself to say the word. 

Which is why I want this Cosima person to contact me. I need to know what this means for me, for my family. And then I want to forget about it. I want them all to leave me alone, forget I exist. But I can't until I know I'm safe, that the kids and Donnie are safe. Clones. For the love of Christmas cake!

“What?! No! Let's give her a minute Beth. It is a lot to take in, as I think you know.” Beth is worried and has been for weeks. She has a roughness to her voice today though that wasn't there the last we spoke. She sounds simultaneously exhausted and on edge. I glance at the clock- 11:35- close enough, and pour myself a glass of Cabernet to wash down half a Xanax. 

“I will let you know the moment I know Beth. You should get some sleep. It sounds like you need it.”

I hit the end button and stuff the phone back in the pocket of my Lululemons. Jemma’s class needs four dozen cake pops for the bake sale, and I have work to do.

DELPHINE

It has become increasingly difficult for me to sleep at night, so much so that I find myself absently wandering towards student health services during my lunch break, intent on getting my hands on a prescription for something. Anything. I briefly entertained the idea of writing my own, I am a doctor even if I feel more like a lab subject than a lab supervisor most days, but the ethical quandary was just enough to propel me across the frigid quad towards Boynton. It is a funny thing, the politics of being ethical, especially given my life circumstances, as if ethics even apply anymore. Even in my semi-lucid state I stand rail straight and track the grounds like a hawk, eyes darting nervously across the landscape, alighting on each face within range for the briefest of milliseconds. I am looking for her, always looking for her.

It has been days, weeks maybe - my sense of time is becoming less and less reliable with every sleepless night, since our kiss and it is all I can think about. Despite the recent opening of my lab, the sifting through graduate student applications, the painfully awkward interviews, and the frequent invitations to DYAD events I find that my mind, and my dreams, are rife with her. Sometimes these dreams are pleasant, a deepening series of fantasies involving all manner of wanton desires satisfied, but mostly they are terrifying. Mostly they involve her in multitude. I cannot help but wonder if I am becoming insane, if I am going batshit, as Ada would say. I find the incongruous euphemisms of my unlikely roommate permeating my speech and am alternately delighted and horrified whenever they slip out of my otherwise proper mouth. Just yesterday I gave Donna a shock when I broke a beaker and muttered fucking christ on a cracker. Thankfully she simply chuckled and suggested that perhaps my students were rubbing off on me and that I would benefit from a break.

My students. A strange bunch. Nerds, Ada would call them. Kin, Claire would consider them. As for Jordana, her thoughts are so distant from my own that I have difficulty reading her, difficulty translating her intentions, her motivations. I will have the opportunity to try harder soon, winter break is coming and Ada and I are making a pilgrimage to the southern reaches of the United States so that I can meet my other sisters in person and so that we can finally all be in one place to trade information and consume many bottles of wine. Unfortunately for my shattered nerves this will come directly on the heels of a trip to Toronto on DYAD. I am expected to make a presentation about my goals for the new lab, though Leekie has suggested not too obliquely that this is more about fundraising than epigenetics and it would be a fine idea if I dressed nicely, and not in the professional sense. 

“Fucking creep,” I mutter to myself and shake his image out of my head as I continue to observe my surroundings through the thin veil of delicate snowfall beginning to blanket the grounds. As I was leaving the building Donna had called behind me to take a coat and now I wish I had followed her advice, my limbs are shaking slightly and my hair is beginning to stick to my cheeks. I duck beneath one of the many archways between the faux gothic buildings lining this part of campus and draw out a cigarette, my hands shaking as I dig through my bag. I may have forgotten my coat, but at least I did not forget my lighter. I inhale deeply and close my eyes, letting my weary shoulder rest against the frigid stone behind me. My thoughts are loose and scattered, peppered with guilt for going into a medical office smelling of tobacco, smattered with the heady mix of exhaustion, confusion, and arousal that plague me every time my thoughts turn to her. I try to count the days, my eyes still closed, since I last saw her, since my lips pressed to hers. Perhaps she is not my monitor afterall. How often does a monitor need to be near his or her subject? What is the reporting process like? Are there standard forms? Checklists? I have to smirk at this thought, how could any of this be standard?

When I open my eyes I am not surprised to see her. It is as if my heart is ahead of my brain, as if I am tuned to her, a tightening violin ready to wail. I have felt her presence often, but it is only now, only in my weakened state, that she has finally appeared, finally come into my vision. Though she acts as if she has not seen me, I am sure she has. I have little doubt that she is aware of my every move, that she has other ways of knowing me. She is yards away, her laughter piercing the air as she jets across the grounds, a hasty snowball in her outstretched grip.

“Surrender now and I might spare you!”

I slide behind a column and peer around carefully, even if she has seen me, I can still pretend that she has not. A familiar male voice answers her, though the words are drowned out as the snowball connects with the bespectacled face, Cosima’s laughter echoes off of the stone around me and into the darkest places beneath my skull. I squint across the thickening snowfall and watch as the male student wipes the snow from his cheeks, laughing in time with Cosima. Scott. His name is Scott Smith. I know this because I interviewed him yesterday, and while I was impressed with his resume I found it difficult to make sense of his answer to my question regarding his sudden interest in immunology given his recent studies in a completely different field. An awkward yet brilliant young man, and, not unlike his gorgeous friend, a terrible liar.

Watching his interactions with Cosima, the warmth of friendship, the tangle of laughter, his interview makes a bit more sense. I doubt he is my monitor, but he must be involved in the conspiracy. Perhaps she is outsourcing some of her labors, thought for what purpose I cannot be sure. I finish my cigarette and walk onto the quad quickly, I know she is watching but I do not stop. I am freezing, confused, and in desperate need of drugs. I think she is calling my name and I wave slightly, I think I say something about being late for something. I have no idea what is happening to me anymore. I have no idea what I am saying.

********

“Jesus fuck! It’s even colder here than it is in fucking Minnesota!” Ada huddles into my side, her face buried into the cowl of the pea coat I found for her to wear. I have to snicker at her colorful language and her attention to things obvious and immediate.

 _“Desole ma soeur,_ if only travelling south always produced warmer temperatures...” I wink at her scowling face and wrap an arm around her as we make our way across the lot at Pearson Airport towards the cab stand. I try not to betray my nervousness as I burrow into my own coat, avoiding the tiny signs and livery of the town car drivers, particularly the one that is looking for me. It was not my intention to bring Ada to Toronto, especially given our suspicions about DYAD, but in the end she had begged and I had acquiesced, the thought of going into the lion’s den alone no more appealing to me than the thought of being alone for three days with little to do was to her. I walk with a confidence that I do not feel. I am Doctor Delphine Cormier. I am a DYAD fellow at The University of Minnesota. I am capable. I am not falling apart. I am a clone. I think. The temazepam has done wonders for my sleep but little good for my thoughts which continue to scatter themselves haphazardly across the landscape of my messy life. My dreams, when they happen, are fuzzy. My waking life is beginning to feel like a dream. Ada elbows me as I raise my arm to hail a cab, her dark brows raised, her face my perpetual mirror. She is growing the shaved part of her hair out and it makes her look like a curious hedgehog, adorable and bristly. My heart swells with love for her.

“You ok, D?” She narrows her eyes before I answer. She knows I will lie, and I do. I do not wish to disappoint her expectations.

“Yes. I am fine.”

“Do you think they’ll figure it out? Like, the hotel switch and shit?”

I shrug. I doubt Leekie will notice or care where I stay, as long as I am in Toronto on the days he asked that I be there, as long as I smile brightly and laugh at jokes I do not understand and explain my research in a way that others can understand. I packed appropriately, given his barely veiled request, and I sigh with frustration at the thought of dressing in such a manner given the weather. I had no idea that the acquisition of so many degrees, so many titles, would force me into situations where my face and body were still the most interesting things about me. Ada must sense my frustration, my angst, because she wraps her too thin arm around my waist and rests her head on my shoulders. We are shipwrecked twins in a sea of scientific madness. We are adrift on the sinister whims of the unknown without hope or beacon. A cab pulls up and we slide inside, at least we can escape from the cold.

ADA

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck fuckity fuck.

I pace back and forth at the end of the platform, my stomach in knots as the police, the paramedics, and the firefighters rush by. I saw her, I saw her fucking jump. I saw the other one too, the one that was just like her, both of them like the picture of Cosima Delphine showed me on the U of M graduate student website. Even if I barely made eye contact with them I could pick those fucking eyes out of a goddamn line up. FUCK!

She took off her fucking shoes! It’s like negative twenty out here - who does that?! The police are starting to look for witnesses - I duck down an ally as the clone phone rings loudly, my face is freezing, I think I might be crying. I’ve seen people die, I’ve seen the slow descent into frozen sleep, the junkie stare and the foaming mouth. But this?! I’ve never seen anything like this. I answer the phone, Delphine is on the other end. I will tell her about this in person. She gives me an address. I’m supposed to meet her in twenty minutes. I’m supposed to make sense of all of this shit. I need a fix. I need a fix. I need…

Fuck.

COSIMA

I know I should tell Leekie about Alison. I know this, and still I haven’t. I emailed her back, providing a number for her to call me via Skype. The need to see my own clone is too great. I find myself drawn to mirrors, looking into my own eyes, searching for something I know isn’t there. I have studied exactly this my entire life practically. I know that there will be no physical differences aside from superficial. I look down into the bath water at my tattoos wondering if Alison has any. Will she have glasses like me, or is my farsightedness due to too many late nights at the computer or poring over a book with just a flashlight under the covers? I suppose all of these questions will be answered soon enough, she is supposed to be calling in half an hour.

Leaning back, I reach over the side of the tub to grab my trusty little vape. When the light turns green I inhale deeply and rest my head at the back of the tub. It doesn’t take long for my thoughts to drift to Delphine. She had to have seen me today. I saw her see me, but her eyes looked vacant. She looked spooked. God, was she straight? I swear I read every signal she was sending and she was definitely into me. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe there really is some sort of cultural thing that makes all French women seem like they want to lick your neck. I sigh and stretch, long and languorous before pulling myself up and out of the warm cocoon. One thing at a time, and right now it's time to meet my clone.

ALISON

OK, shades are pulled, Donnie is at work, kids are at school, and the front door is locked. What am I forgetting? Maybe I should take notes. No, Beth can take the notes, I don’t want to risk Donnie or the kids finding something they don’t understand. Beth should be calling in any minute, and then I’ll conference Cosima in. How do I look? Standing in front of the mirror, I notice dark circles that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago, but otherwise I think I look pretty good. It never hurts to freshen up your lipstick though. I swipe my tube of Pink Sunset over my lips, blot, and give my ponytail a tug. This will have to do, I can hear the chime of Skype from across the room.

“Beth, hey. How are you?” If I have dark circles, Beth looks like an extra from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Her face is gaunt, her eyes sunken, and she clearly didn’t take the time to put any makeup on. Her hair could also use a trim and maybe a deep conditioning treatment. My mind begins to wander to what would be most useful, an avocado and ylang ylang mud or a coconut oil infusion, when she calls me out.

“Alison, are you even listening to me? This is important. I need you to pay attention. Katja is planning to come over here with a suitcase full of samples from the Europeans she’s been able to track down, along with whatever information she’s been able to get. I’m going to meet with her. We need Cosima to be onboard so that we can run genetic tests on these samples and see if we can figure out if there’s anything she can tell us about who made us, or why we’re getting sick.”

“Sick? Who’s getting sick? I thought you said that Katja was worried that there was some sort of physical danger- that’s why I bought the gun, and you gave me lessons. I’ve been putting solid time in at the range Beth, do I need to be taking echinacea and B-12 too?”

“Shh, Ali, easy there. I don’t know anything for sure, and Katja has gotten a little bit cagey. I think she’s spooked. Let’s call Cosima and see if she’s willing to help, and we can go from there ok? It’s going to be fine.”

I bite back my urge to argue when I see how tired she looks. I know when I’m being handled with kid gloves, and I don’t particularly appreciate it. I bankrolled this operation. I can handle myself, can handle anything, I just hate surprises. I just need to know. Beth, on the other hand, looks like she doesn’t want to know anything else at all. I relent. “Ok, I have her number, are you ready?”

She nods, and sighs. I pretend to not notice as she palms some pills and dry swallows as I key in the number. It is none of my business. None of these women’s lives are any of my business, and once I figure out how to keep my family safe, well, my life will be none of theirs either.

COSIMA

I’m shrugging into a robe when I hear the trill of Skype. I take a deep breath, and paste a smile on my face and try not to think about how tight my chest feels when I fill my lungs to capacity. The screen flickers for a moment and there I am. There we are. Oh my god, there I am.

The one with the ponytail blinks hard, and I watch her quickly grimace and I think hear her murmur “Jesus Murphy” before greeting my smile with a thousand-watt grin of her own. I break the silence.

“Hey, I’m Cosima.”

The one with the long straight hair manages a small smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I’m Beth, and that’s Alison. Thank you for getting in touch. I know all of this is a lot to take in.”

I feel the now-familiar twist of guilt in my gut. I suppose it was a lot to take in when I was a teenager. And no, these women aren’t exactly what I’d pictured when I thought about my clones, but I had had a decade to think about the prospect, and they’d had, what, a few weeks at most? I was again struck by the total lack of ethics that drove this whole project. Leekie was going to have to answer some tough questions, because the more I thought about it, thought about the others, the more fucked up it got.

Clearing my throat, I reply, “Uh, yeah, maybe a little. I just… it is really weird to just even look at you. I… clones. I won’t lie, it’s kind of blowing my mind.”

I watch Alison run her hand over her ponytail, and twirl a wedding band around her finger. Wow. She’s married. I can’t imagine a universe where the me that I am would be married by now. But she isn’t me. She’s like, another version, with another life, other experiences. Ugh. I have to stop thinking about it or it really will blow my mind.

“So...uh...you said you needed my help? That you guys are in danger? I hope you understand, I’m just an evolutionary biology student, I’m still working on my PhD. I like, spend my life looking at microscopes and reports. I don’t know how helpful I’d be.”

The tired one, Beth, looks up from her hands, “I think you have the potential to be really very helpful Cosima. For one, I can spend my life reading about this shit but I still don’t really understand it. I don’t know how we came to be, or why, or who would have wanted to do this. I can maybe figure out the why and the who, but the how is pretty elusive.”

Alison pipes up, “Beth is being modest. She’s a detective, and a good one. She is trying to put this all together, and she has help. A woman named Katja, another….” I watch her stumble over the word, “of us. She is in Germany though.”

I do my best to follow, still not sure what they want from me, what the danger is. “Ok, so there’s you, me, Beth and Katja. And you want to know how we came to be? I don’t know that I can answer that really. I mean, are you sure we’re clones? What if we’re just like… quadruplets separated at birth or something.”

Beth replies for Alison, “I’d like to believe maybe that was true, really I would Cosima, but I am sure my mom gave birth to me. My dad took some pictures when I was born that I rather wish he hadn’t, if you know what I mean.”

Alison pipes up, “I’ve also seen photos of my mother pregnant with me. And…” She looks into the screen, I suppose at Beth, who nods “And there are more of us. A lot more. Katja is still working on how many in Europe, and Beth is working on Canada and the U.S. but it isn’t just four. There are too many for this to be anything other than human cloning. We’re identical. I mean, I don’t understand how all of these databases work, but we have found seven others already. There are probably more.”

I sit back and try to recall if Leekie had ever answered my question about how many of us there were, and I realize that he is very good at providing non-answers and deflecting back to the levels of confidentiality at DYAD. “Ok, ok… so… you want to know how we’re cloned. I mean, theoretically it is possible.” I laugh, and meet two sets of identical eyes. “I mean, I guess it’s totally possible. Here’s how it would have to work.”

I find myself going into teacher mode, explaining what I know. “OK, well, it would either have to be a somatic-cell nuclear transfer, or I guess it could be pluriopotent stem-cells, but that’s really new tech, I don’t think someone could have had it for as long as we’ve been around without it being known.”

Beth holds up her hand. “Listen, I need you to back up a second and explain this like I’m five. Pluri-what now?”

I find myself getting pretty jazzed, and wonder if they can tell I’m high. My hands start to weave the story of us, of how we might be possible. Soon I begin to pace. I can see it in their eyes when they understand a point I’m making, and I think again about how unfair it is that I’ve known this to be true about my very being for so long but that for them, this is all new and scary and seems like science fiction. I try to make it sound more human, less technical and cold for them. When I catch Alison looking at her watch, I slow it down.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve been talking for like, five-ever. You guys probably have lives.”

Allison nods sharply. “I just need to get going to pick up my kids from school soon. But thank you for the information.” She looks shellshocked. 

“Wow, oh, ok. Kids. Wow. I can barely keep myself fed and clothed, let alone be responsible for other humans.”

Her smile is real this time, not the pasted on mask of earlier. “I have two, a boy and a girl. They’re the best thing I’ve done with my life.”

Beth breaks in, her impatience obvious. “So, if I were to get you samples, of like, DNA, could you see if they’re really all identical, or if there’s some clue to if we’re different or something?”

“Oh, yeah, um, I think I could get some lab time and see what I can find.”

Alison breaks in, “I have to go. You guys can talk, let me know if you need anything else from me, ok?”

Her screen goes blank and I'm left with Beth, her voice is soft, kind, weary, “She is a little freaked out. It is a lot to take in, you know?”

“Yeah. Yeah it is. But I don't get the danger Beth. What was she talking about in the email? I get that we're like...mutants or whatever but I'm not sure what the danger is.”

She hangs her head, and I find myself twisting my bangles. “That's the trouble. I'm not sure what the danger is either, but some of the women that Katja identified in Europe have gone missing, and two were victims of stabbings. It wasn't enough to ring any alarm bells because one was in Belgium and the other in Spain, but I'm worried they're related.” 

She looks up, “And, I swear I'm not a paranoid person, but I feel like I'm being watched.”

I start to reply when her phone rings. I watch her check the display and grimace. “I've got to go. I'll be in touch, ok?”

“OK. I'll email you with some information ok? To help you guys understand.” It's the least I can do. The very least.

................

Delphine is gone for the next week. I'm not sure where, but I buttered Donna up with latte and a scone and got that much out of her. I'm more disappointed than I have a right to be, and wonder if she's left town to avoid me. I'm probably being too self-centered. Maybe she's presenting at a conference or begging for funding. Ah well, I have enough on my plate. I've been texting with Alison and Beth, and it looks like Katja is coming to the US with the samples soon. I need to get sequencer time. I really need Leekie to get me dedicated lab space, this jockeying for position with the other doctoral students isn't going to work for me. Then again, I don't want Leda samples on DYAD computers so maybe school labs would be better.

I've gotten paranoid and am only communicating with the sisters on a TracFone or my own laptop. Who watches the watchers? It's starting to make my brain hurt. Timandra...Leda… Clearly Leekie has been selective in the information he's provided me. And I know he's been waiting for reporting from me. His emails have gotten increasingly terse and he even asked Scott about me, if I was ill or anything. I've just been trying to figure out where I stand. 

I still believe I am positioned better than anyone else right now. I'm inside DYAD. I mean, I guess Delphine is too, but she doesn't know she's a clone. I can't shake the feeling that she knows something though, that she saw right through me. I find myself thinking about the other Timandras now that I've met two Ledas. How would they differ from their French sister? What traits would they share? I understand Leekie’s interest now, how someone could lose sight of their ethics. The science really is fucking amazing and when you add the psychology and epigenetics it is mindblowing. 

I'm halfway across the street when I see the black Town Car parked in front of my apartment. Damn it. The window slides down silently and Dr. Leekie gestures for me to get in. 

Sliding across the leather seat, I see he is feigning disinterest, not taking his eyes off of the folder in front of him until I stop moving and look at him expectantly. I am used to his little displays of power. I remain unimpressed. 

He drops the folder and pins me with a stare. Ok. Maybe a little intimidating. “Where are we with Delphine?”

“I...we...she made a pass at me Dr. Leekie.” The moment it leaves my lips I want to snatch it back. God! Why can't I get my mouth on a leash!? 

He seems unsurprised and I'm really not into the look on his face as he replies. “Really? Cosima. Delphine's safety is at stake. Other subjects too. I need to know more. I need to know who she is with, where she has been. I need to know if she is self-aware.” His face holds an intensity that I haven't seen before. It's a little frightening. 

“I know. But she has to initiate disclosure. And she's avoiding me.”

“I am not saying disclose. But this is a direct threat. I need you to dig deeper. Faster.”

He leans across me to open the door. It is clear I have been dismissed. I stare at the tail lights as the car glides down the block. A direct threat. I don't understand. When I took this gig the only danger was a respiratory disease. But now both he and Beth are talking about something more sinister. Something that all the DNA sequencing in the world isn't going to solve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for sticking with this story while we eke out time to write.


	16. Punctuated Equilibrium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merrily we roll along- next up, "I can't stop thinking about that kiss."

JORDANA

I have never lied to Chad before. Well, I suppose there have been some little white lies in the bedroom, but not anything of substance really. But this week I told him I was goin’ on a church retreat, and I would be home after the long weekend away. I asked the nanny to work overtime at time and half, and she agreed all too readily. I can’t help but wonder if Chad and she have made arrangements that go beyond child care. 

I’m so tired and mixed up lately- I’m not sure if I really care. He’s left me be for a few weeks now, and I haven’t had it in me to ask why. I know I should care, and that I should perform my wifely duties with love and respect for his place in my life as my husband and as Avery’s father, the head of our household, but maybe if he’d paid more attention to how often I was little white lyin’ I would be more eager to help him out. Honestly, I’m not sure if I want him to touch me ever again, not with this monitor thing between us.

I rented us a lodge outside of Stone Mountain. There are horses and a chef’s kitchen, a hot tub, and a wine chiller. The views of the mountains really are breathtaking from the enormous wraparound porch, and I’ve found myself looking forward to this weekend away for a few weeks now. I haven’t had a girls weekend since a troupe of Chi O’s and I went to Cabo on our spring break what seems like a lifetime ago now. 

I am hopeful that Ada meant it when she said she could cook, or that someone will be willing to deliver to us, since all I’ve brought is a case of cabernet, a case of pinot, and enough gin and tonic to drown a toddler. Claire said she would take care of the food. Apparently Ada sent her a list before she and Delphine headed out to the great white north. I told her to use her special Amex. I’ll just send the bill to Daddy.

CLAIRE

Having never had any siblings, I find myself almost giddy with anticipation for this weekend. At least I think that’s what this is, either that or I’m experiencing a new and different type of anxiety attack. Oh God, is that what this is? No. No, of course not. I’m just excited to have all of us together. I have to remember to breathe. Respiration is important.

I almost can’t believe that this cabin is for real, but then again I felt the same way in Jordana’s cathedral of a house. This is just how she lives- big hair, big house, big heart. It’s the Southerner in her. Picking up the groceries, I take a few trips and set bags on the porch before keying in the code Jordana sent. I don’t know if I’ve bought this many groceries for a month, let alone a long weekend. Ada said she could cook, and I sure hope she’s right, since some of these ingredients I’ve never even heard of. I’m more of a Lean Cuisine in the microwave kind of girl. Or Dominos and Ben and Jerrys. I mean, who is going to complain? The dog? 

Sweet Ada is all skin and bones, but has filled out these last weeks. I’m glad that she seems excited to cook for us. She needs to feel like she has something to contribute and it seems as though she has a skill that the rest of us lack learned from working in restaurants- back of house. Funny, we say back of house in museums too, for the type of work that I do. I’m reminded again that we all share more than just this face. 

I think, ironically, that I’ve become the mother hen of the group. Me- the loner who doesn’t quite understand how to be with people seems to be the one around whom the sisters orbit. Jordana is the skeptic and of course has bankrolled us. Ada is the rough and tumble one and apparently the cook, and now Delphine. Hopefully she’ll be able to help with the science. There’s also a depth of emotion there that she seems reluctant to show, but it is there. I see it when she’s with Ada. We’re all so much more than we let on.

JORDANA

I don’t even know when I was last this happy. Certainly it was before Nina came into my life. Probably before Chad too. Simpler times. I lift my glass and take a long swallow. The world is a little spinny, and I blink hard to still it. Ada and Claire are arguing about whether or not she should go to culinary school as Delphine clears the table. I let them argue the merits for a few minutes before I have to jump in.

“Honey, no. A culinary degree is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. If you wanna cook, you go find yourself a restaurant and you cook. You don’t need to spend a pile of money learning what you can pick up from a good chef. And listen, you can already cook. Last I ever ate this much I followed it with a trip to pray to the porcelain god so that I could fit into my debutante dress.”

They all turn to me and I blink hard again when they all give me an identically incredulous look. “What?! It’s true. Now listen, it is late, and I’m tipsy, but I ain’t dumb. Ada, you and Delphine have something to say. I saw y’all arguing when you were pretending to chop veggies. What’s goin’ on? Did you hear from Nina?”

Ada and Delphine refill their glasses, top mine off, and bring Claire a soda with lime. Claire is poking at the damn fire again. I watch as Ada folds into herself on the couch, and looks to Delphine who nods at her reassuringly. I figured there was something, but the alcohol and good ol’ fashion lady company kept me from dying of curiosity, until now.

“I... When we were in Toronto, I was on a train platform, trying to get back to the hotel, and I saw a girl jump in front of a train.”

Claire hops up and kneels in front of Ada. “Oh honey, no! Are you ok? I’m so sorry. That must have been such a shock!”

Ada shakes her head to clear the image. “Yeah, I mean, it was, but that’s not all. I’ve seen some fucked up shit. But this. It was her.”

Her voice goes strangled as she catches Delphine’s gaze.

My spidey senses are on high alert. “Her _who_ , Ada? Who did you see? Another one of us?”

Delphine is spinning her wine glass between long fingers, an unconscious fidget that I look down and see myself doing as well. Her voice is soft, “Non. Not another one of us. Another Cosima. Two. One who was killed by the train, and another who witnessed it.” 

I am instantly sober. “That’s it. Delphine, you have to steer clear of that girl until we figure out what in Sam Hill is going on.”

Delphine nods absently, I know she heard me and I know she isn't going to listen. If it were me, I wouldn't either. I shake my head as the rest of the story, the questions, the gaps, and the concerns, wash over me. Before I know it I've switched to Hendrick’s and find that my face is much closer to the carpet than I intended.

“Easy there…” Claire whispers, draping a blanket over me. “It's gonna be ok Jo...it's gonna…” I close my eyes, I know she's lying.

DELPHINE

I know Jordana is right, I know should stay away from Cosima. I know this with the same certainty that I know Cosima is my monitor, with the same certainty that I know that I cannot avoid her. It is as if she is the missing piece of the puzzle of my life, like she somehow, just by existing, can solve the mysteries that have plagued me - the constant fear of being watched, the science experiment that was my relationship with Esme, perhaps even the death of my parents. I settle into the depths of the pillow top mattress, my naked frame consumed by down and egyptian cotton. I could live like this, I could run away from it all, serve my residency, play doctor, amass a small fortune, move from fling to fling. I could. I could. _Mon dieu, bebe Jesus_ , whoever the fuck is listening, I could!

I feel my cheeks burning as tears run freely, I do not move to wipe them. My life, the idea of it and the reality, a tangled mess of what ifs and if onlys. I know I will go to her, I know it. I will find her address in the student profile database, I will go to her apartment, and I will do lord only knows what. I will betray my sisters in service of my heart, I am no longer safe from myself, I am no longer able to form meaningful allegiances. I close my eyes against the flood and feel the room spinning from behind my eyelids. My shoulders heave silently as I slip into the dark chasm of my own mind, the demons waiting quietly to pounce and rend and tear.

*********

_The apparition of these faces in the crowd…_

I tried to say her name but I cannot make the words, even as she opens her arms from across the platform, even as she whispers mine from across the electric gulf.

Delphine...Delphine my love…

I choke back a sob and turn away, turn away from the warm arms of the woman who birthed me, turn away from the fractured skull and clotted blood that is her face. She does not see how damaged she is, she cannot see, she cannot know, because she is dead. I know she is dead, but she does not. Her voice grows more frantic as I close my palms over my ears, blocking her and the singer out as best as I can, my steps growing faster as I rush towards the stairs.

_Petals on a wet, black…_

I know he will be there before I get there, but I go anyway. This is how dreams work. You have one idea about what you want but you cannot control it, just as you cannot control a reflex. My father, also skeletal, his arms crossed, his familiar scarf and hat, waits for me, the remnants of an eyebrow raised, flecked with blood. I do not turn from him, but I try to ignore him as I brush past him into the harsh morning light of my dream Paris. As he tries to speak, tries to reach for me, his jaw falls off and clatters down the stairs. I begin laughing and cannot stop, even as the crowds surge forward, even as I drown in frantic bodies.

I wake myself laughing hysterically, I am coming unhinged, I am falling apart.


End file.
